Fever Dream
by VaguelyFamiliar
Summary: Sleep is no escape from pain. Her heart is in his province now. Sion, DSF Exile pairing. Chapter 11: Atton's plan goes predictably pear-shaped.
1. The Unmarked Box

She lies in supine surrender. There is an odalisque's coyness to the tilt of her chin, the parted lips and heavy-lidded gaze. From the low sweep of her jaw to her right temple her skin is flayed open and pinned to either side, like wings.

The holo was a still, a snippet of medical record that somehow found its way into the free-access Republic archives along with other once-confidential details of the Exile's decade of wandering. Sion often lingered over that single frozen moment, contemplating the clouded mismatched eyes, the gleaming furrows of exposed muscle and bone. He did not know why, and the mystery of his own motivations annoyed him.

In a span of days his hounds would run her down. Starved and eager for blood, the assassins would nevertheless adhere to his command: the Jedi's last breath was to be wrung from her body by Sion's hands alone.

Then she would die, and this strange and unwelcome curiosity would die with her.

* * *

One breath of recycled air thick with the scent of living bodies and already the itch was back, the need to be lost again. 

Del froze on the transport shuttle's lowermost step, grasping at last minute reasons to cancel this foray into the land of the living: she should lay low a while longer, search out medications somewhere with fewer people . . . but the pulsing heat of sickness behind her right eye argued otherwise.

The eye was fake, a clever ball of microcircuitry and photoreceptive fibers. Her immune system was up to its old tricks, attempting to rid her body of the intruding technology by sabotaging the flesh around it. This tactic hadn't worked with numerous skin grafts, implants, and augmentations, but this time she'd allowed the sepsis to seethe and spread.

As usual, a member of the Exchange had footed the medical bills. In return, she'd been given the names of half a dozen sentients, every one of whom she'd tracked down and killed. She'd poisoned the last of them, a human man holed up in a flophouse on the edge of nowhere. As she sat smoking a cigarra and watching the light fade from his eyes, his twelve-year-old daughter had broken from her hiding place, a blaster in her hands.

Del left the girl's body next to her father's. For days after her medication ran out she did nothing but lay still in the dark and wait for the infection to eat her alive. The desire to die eventually passed, as it always did, but the fever remained.

Her boot heels clicked metronome-steady across the permacrete station flooring. Del told herself that the situation was in hand, that she was cool as carbonite. Then came her first glimpse of sentient station dwellers, and her guts seized up in the push-pull of loneliness and fear. One of them, an adolescent girl, looked up as she passed. Del's breathing hastened to panting.

She ducked into the first empty alcove she found, considered the steroid nebulizer strapped to her wrist and lit a cigarra instead. The first deep drag of smoke choked her, the second numbed her lungs into submission. Puff by puff her breathing slowed, her heart quit its trapped-bird hammering against her ribs. She leaned her head against the wall and daubed sweat from the patches of her skin that weren't synthetic.

_Stop acting the cowardly schoolgirl, _she told herself.She pressed a palm against her eye, a disconcertingly cool weight in its warm, swollen orbit._ You've killed an entire planet._ _What's one more ghost in your shadow? _

Del ground the cigarra into a faded 'no smoking' placard and resumed her trek. At last she came upon a long numbered row of metal bins, each equipped with a keyreader slot–not as convenient as a permanent postal address, but a good option for someone allergic to permanence in general. She swiped her keycard and the bin clicked open. Inside were the expected packages of medications, bandages, and the like. She stuffed them into her haversack, then paused. Wedged in the very back of the bin was one more parcel, small and boxy, lacking any indication of what it was or who had sent it.

There were hours to kill before the transport would be ready to leave again, and her stomach was so empty it was eating itself. Del managed to stave off her curiosity long enough to find a seat in a near-empty cantina and order a meal. That accomplished, she took the boxy package and scrabbled it free of its protective casing.

The box was plain and beat up at the corners. There were no security measures to bypass, just a simple metal latch. No one with a hair of sense would risk something like that to the vagaries of the Republic postal system. She frowned at it, testing its weight in her hand. A gentle shaking of the box brought to her ear the tinkling, delicate slither of a metal chain.

Fingers at the back of her neck . . . bands of bold blue ink sweeping back across a pale brow . . . eyes dark with the confusion of envy and love . . .

Del's scalp prickled as the ghost of memory drifted across her skin, conjured by sound alone. With the clumsy hands of a sleepwalker she released the latch, drew back the lid, and looked inside.

From a layer of dusty padding grew an orchid cleverly worked in metal and enamel, its slender chain coiled about it like a silvery vine. Some petals were perfect, others ran together in a twisted, bubbled mess.

It was physical incapability, not discipline, that kept Del's eyes dry at the sight of it. The electrical fire that had resculpted the pendant so many years ago had also worked its savage artistry on her face, robbing her of one eye and nearly blinding the other. She sat still as stone with nothing but a frustrated burn in the scalded remnants of her tear ducts.

A hand touched her shoulder. Lifting her gaze, she realized that the twi'lek waitress had been trying to get her attention for some time. The waitress eyed her suspiciously and plunked down a cheap plastic goblet.

"Courtesy of the hume in the jacket at the end of the bar," the twi'lek said, and sashayed out of earshot before Del could form a reply.

She shut the box and tucked it into her haversack. Once out of sight the pendent immediately seemed less real, and her focus returned. She stole a look at the man the waitress had mentioned, easy to find since he was the only other human in the cantina. He was staring in the opposite direction and nursing a glass of juma. She watched him for a while, but the back of his jacket held no clues as to why he might have seen the need to purchase alcohol on her behalf.

_Lucky me_, she thought. _Another mystery. _

Whatever was in the cup smelled highly flammable. She swirled it once and drained it. As she set the cup back on the table, the paper ring around its base came loose in her hand. Written upon it was a staccato warning:

_Being watched. 2 bugs 1 devil. All armed. _

She put the paper face down on the table. Bending as though to retrieve a dropped bit of cutlery, she glanced around the cantina and found it was no longer so empty. A pair of rodians were at a table behind her, cradling stunners in their laps. A tall devaronian was only a few strides away, openly staring. Del felt like kicking herself. Instead, she quietly withdrew her own weapon from the holster at her thigh.

At some wordless cue the devaronian stood and wove between the tables and chairs to stand in front of her.

"Katya Deleón," he said, and bowed.

First her missing pendent, now her discarded name. The past was in a biting mood.

"I haven't heard that name in a while," she said mildly, while under the table her fingers traced the comforting curves and angles of her blaster. "Is there something I can do for you gentleman?"

"There is indeed. Join me at my ship civilly, and spare me the need to convey you by force." The devaronian smiled. He was quite handsome, all gleaming horns and flashing teeth. What a shame she'd probably be shooting him soon.

"You're not even going to pay for my dinner first?" She leaned into the light, giving him a good look at her scar-webbed, mottled flesh. "How disappointing."

Revulsion flickered briefly across his features. Seeing it made her feel like either laughing or blasting a hole right in the center of his smooth, sculpted brow–maybe both.

"A very powerful man has taken an interest in you," he continued. "He wants you unharmed, and if at all possible I wish to oblige him." He put his hands on the table palm up and empty. The gesture might have been reassuring if it didn't reveal the heavily modified blaster strapped under his arm.

"The Exchange sent you to fetch me." The corner of her lip drew back in disgust. "You reek of dirty money."

The devaronian's smile widened. "The same money that paid for many of your surgeries, including that eye with which you are currently giving me such a vile glare."

Her trigger finger itched to give him something worse than a glare to be concerned about. "And I did everything they asked in return." Her voice was low, dangerous. "I'm through with the Exchange."

He made a subtle gesture with his hand, and Del heard the scrape of synthwood on tile as the rodians behind her stood. "Unfortunately, that is not your decision to make." He paused theatrically, allowing his cohorts time to get into position and Del to activate the implants plugged into the nerves running down each arm. When the handsome devaronian finally spoke again, it was in a near-whisper. "You're outnumbered, Jedi."

Del hooked her forearms under the table, upended it, and heaved it backwards over her head. The rodians dove out of the way with comical screeches of surprise. While they scrambled she fired and winged the devaronian. The impact sent him spinning to the floor. His blaster flipped from his hand; she kicked it across the room.

Hot energy blistered her cheek as it shot past. She grabbed an abandoned drink and flung it into the rodian's face. Her return fire followed the arc of liquid and ignited it, for a single second obscuring the insectoid features behind a veil of blue flame. His partner shot, missed, and got a blast in the guts for his trouble.

"What's going on?"

The kitchen doors swung open. The twi'lek waitress took two steps, caught sight of the smoldering rodian, and froze in terror.

"Run, you idiot," Del shouted. When her words prompted no reaction, she fired at the floor in front of the girl's feet. "Back in the kitchen, now!"

The devaronian had recovered his blaster while she was distracted. Del discovered this when a ball of fiery agony erupted against her sternum, hurling her into a table. Her jacket absorbed most of the hit, but what got past hurt so badly she could do nothing but lay back, stunned, as the devaronian lined up a second shot.

Throughout the conflict the man at the bar had sat calmly, paying attention only to his drink. Now he turned, leisurely drew a pistol from his belt, and shot the devaronian in the back. The horned man crumpled into a pained heap on the floor.

Del forced herself to stand, face contorted with pain-fueled rage. She fired shot after shot at the rodians until they stopped twitching, then advanced on the moaning devaronian. Her hand closed around his florid throat and clamped down, hard.

"Exchange money also paid for these strength enhancers of mine . . . or didn't they tell you about those?" She squeezed harder, enjoying the feeble crunch of his windpipe.

"Stop . . . please."

The waitress had never made it back to the kitchen. Her thin voice pierced Del's fever like a splinter of ice. The rage drained away and left her weak, unsteady. She loosened her fingers, drew back her hand, but the devaronian was already dead.

If he rejoined the Force, she couldn't feel it.

"Didn't expect to watch someone die today." The mystery man from the bar stood at her side, staring impassively at the corpse's face. "What are you going to do now? Station security is slow, but they're the type to shoot a suspect just to cut down on paperwork." His tone was lighthearted, faintly amused, but his dark eyes were intense and unreadable.

Del's chest was a mess. Blood was seeping into her undershirt where the blast had torn the fragile regrown skin. If she didn't make her escape now, she'd have plenty of time to watch the new scars form while behind the glowing bars of a force cage.

She looked up at the man, considering. The roughest sketch of a plan flashed through her mind.

"Do you have a ship?" she asked.

"Not sure I'm ready for the fugitive life . . . But yeah, I've got a ship." He offered his hand.

A subtle shift of the wrist brought the needle to her fingertips. A moment of pressure as he helped her to her feet slipped it under the skin of his wrist. If he felt it, he forgot all about it when she brought the barrel of her blaster up under his ribs.

"I'm going to need its access codes," she said.

Time to be lost again.

* * *

Note: This story came about after listening to the song "Tarantula," by Faithless, on the heels of beating the game and hearing Sion's warped declaration of love. Part of the summary was also inspired by the lyrics, which you can look up if you're interested. 


	2. The Graveyard Ship

Her hands were what caught his eye. The rest of her might have been part of the cantina furniture for all she moved, but her hands tapped and glided and circled on the table like two animals feeling for each other in the dark. Her wrists looked skinny, easily broken. Atton bet he could trap both of them in one hand.

Curiosity kept him staring. She'd been hurt. It was hard to make out from a distance, but patches of her skin had the curdled sheen of a burn that healed badly. The crescent of metal ringing one eye looked bolted into the bone.

He hadn't had any particular outcome in mind when he'd given her the warning, or after, when he'd fired a killing shot at a man he'd never laid eyes on before. It was curiosity all along, that and a strange sense of kinship as he watched those big graceful hands wrap around a throat and _squeeze_.

He figured she'd give him something for helping her out. Credits, maybe, or sex. She wasn't going to win any beauty pageants outside of a burn ward, but part of him was curious to see what other scars might be hidden behind her clothes. Besides, it'd feel good to be someone's hero for a while.

He'd been so certain of her gratitude he'd never thought to keep on an eye on the weapon in her hand.

"The codes," she said again. Her voice was low and slightly hoarse. "I'd rather not have to clean pieces of you off of my jacket."

"You realize that without me you'd be a grease smear on that table back there, right?"

"Yes, it looks like I owe you a favor." She smiled thinly and pressed the blaster into his belly. "Two, once you stop wasting time and give me what I asked for."

"Great. Try to do a good deed and what do I get? A gun-crazy schutta with her eyes on my ship." He slowly reached toward his pocket, keeping his hand in her sight at all times.

_That's right, relax_, he willed her. _Make believe I'd actually go along with this craziness. I'm shifting my feet because I'm nervous, not because that stance will make it easier to knock your double-crossing ass on the floor. _

His sudden blow was messier than he intended but it did knock the gun aside. He lurched away, only to nearly fall when his knees buckled. The woman pulled him close and pinned his arms down with her own. Trying to get free of those strength enhancers was like wrestling with a rancor, especially with his suddenly poor coordination. She slammed her forehead into his own hard enough that his vision went starry, then stuck the blaster under his chin.

"You're quite capable," she panted. "Good thing I poisoned you. Now give me the codes or messiness be damned, I'll blast a hole in your skull."

Atton recognized the bloodlust burning in her eyes and knew that part of her hoped he'd continue to struggle–a real kindred spirit. Glaring, he fished the card on which the codes were written out of his jacket and handed it over. His fingers didn't want to cooperate. His arms and legs felt numb, heavy.

She continued to hold him, watching with clinical interest as the numbness spread to the rest of his body. Then she lowered him to the floor and stepped over him, out of his line of sight. He lay still, unable to do anything but listen to the rapid click-clack of her retreating footsteps as darkness crept across his vision.

_So much for good deeds_, whispered a weakly amused voice in the back of his mind. Then even thought went still.

* * *

Once the ship was settled on course to Telos, Del limped into the 'fresher and let her jacket fall to the floor. The shirt beneath was ragged and singed, crusted to her wounds with dried blood. She gave the hem an experimental tug, and a string of fluent curses later, decided to leave it where it was. 

The enhancers always ravaged her arms. Her muscles craved heat, but her singed nerves burned even under lukewarm water. She stood shivering in the shower with her head bowed, watching the pink-stained water swirl down the drain. When her shirt was soaked through, she gritted her teeth and ripped it free of her skin.

Dark florets of blood dappled the shower floor. The blast wound was even worse then she realized; ragged and big as the span of her hand. If the devaronian had taken that second, well-aimed shot, she no doubt would have breathed her last in a scatter of broken furniture and cheap plastic cups.

So close . . . Life on the Outer Rim was nothing but a series of near-misses. Del could practically tell time by watching her wounds heal.

After a while, the water ran clear. She turned it off and set to doctoring herself, binding her chest with a kolto-infused bandage, then undoing the catches on the ring of plating on her face and sliding it back to hurry through the unpleasant injections into the flesh around her eye. She finished everything off with a cocktail of painkillers and slumped onto the ship's solitary cot, too tired to care that it smelled worse than a dead bantha.

* * *

Someone was standing over her, watching her sleep. 

Del opened her eyes and saw a white-faced man, dressed in a dirty Republic uniform. His lips split wide to scream and a black stream of ash poured from his mouth. Others crowded around the cot, all reaching for her, raining hot ash upon her from their open mouths. Del was screaming too, for her master, for Atris, for Revan.

Their names turned to soot on her tongue.

* * *

A persistent beep slowly called her back to the waking world. A full day had passed in sleep, maybe more. She'd been having _that_ dream again, and for long seconds the black mouths and accusing eyes seemed slightly more real than the glowing proximity display warning her that another ship was creeping alongside her own. A very big ship, if the readout could be trusted. 

Her stolen craft was too rickety to be equipped with a decent holo display, but the com crackled to life as it picked up a transmission from the larger vessel.

It was nothing but static, a steady burst of electrical noise interspersed with rhythmic, airy sounds, like whispers. She listened closely, picking apart the sounds in her mind. She was about to give up and turn off the com when a single word came through, clear as if the speaker was standing right behind her: "_Exile._"

Del turned off the com and wished there was a similar switch for the dread settling deep into her chest. The word lodged itself in her mind. It seemed less a description of her punishment than a description of _her_ . . . a name.

The floor jerked beneath her feet. The engines whined and strained, fought and lost. Whether crewed by dreams or by ghosts, the giant ship was tractoring her in.

* * *

There was no one waiting for her. 

The hangar was dark, lacking even starlight once the huge doors slid shut and penned her in. Fear and discipline pitched a battle in her skull as she groped for her gun and haversack and strapped them into place. After a moment's hesitation, she took the enamel orchid from its box and clasped its chain at the back of her neck.

She found the door by its flickering outline of light. It retracted just before she touched it, like an eye opening wide. The corridor beyond was shabby and bristled with exposed wiring. She stepped over a rusty stain on the floor and told herself that the five parallel streaks of reddish brown on the wall could have been caused by something besides a human hand.

Shapes flickered at the edges of vision. A chorus of whispers rose around her, guiding her deeper into the ship.

At the end of the corridor was a circular chamber, bare-floored and dim. Its sole furnishing was a holo projector set on a pedestal. A datapad was inserted, but the projector had been turned off. Del restored its power and set it to play.

The ghost of a woman in Jedi robes stood before her, rendered life size in transparent shades of blue. Her face was youthful but serious, creases already worn at the corners of her mouth and between her eyes. Between her breasts glittered a small, delicate pendant in the shape of an orchid.

"Log C-1138," came a voice from the projector, and the hologram's lips moved in time. "General Katya Deleón, reporting." The holo skipped. "–charged the front lines as ordered, despite the destruction of all available wardroid backup. Casualties were massive." Another skip. "–no visible strategic gains, but Revan assures me that–"

Del slammed her fist into the projector. The image changed, becoming a static shot of her bandaged body, the skin of her face peeled back in preparation for one of a hundred surgeries.

A low moan caught in her throat. She backed away, eyes clenched shut, until her shoulders collided with something cold and solid, something that shifted and breathed. Her limbs felt heavy, like they had turned to stone. She did not open her eyes or turn around, even as the coldness at her back spoke in a grinding, metallic whisper.

"Are you afraid to die, exile?"

Del and her dark shadow breathed in unison. Icy fear slipped through her stomach and nested deep in her bowels. "Yes," she said.

"I sense the weakness in you, the fear. Your teachings have failed you, as they have failed the galaxy." Another shared breath. "And that is why you must fall."

Del thought of Malachor wreathed in fire, of the hollowness at her core where she'd once felt the ebb and flow of life. "I already have," she whispered.

The moment stretched thin, seemed about to snap–

–and then there were sounds: an opening door, footsteps, shouting. The icy presence withdrew. She remembered how to open her eyes.

Republic soldiers, three of them in uniforms straight out of her dream. As she shook free of the fugue that had fallen over her, she saw that these men were very much alive, not to mention well-armed.

"Stay where you are," one of them commanded. "Cross your hands and put them behind your head."

Del did what he asked. There were pins and needles in her limbs, like she'd fallen asleep in an awkward position. The soldier who had spoken motioned for the others to keep searching and kept his blaster trained on her until they returned, bearing a foldout stretcher covered with a dark plastic sheet.

"No one else here but a corpse, sir," one of them reported.

The one guarding her frowned. "Then who was flying the ship?"

"No idea, sir. But the cannons look recently fired, just like the distress signal from the freighter claimed."

"Everyone on that ship was dead too," the third mumbled. His face was pinched, afraid. "What the hell is going on?"

Del heard next to nothing of the exchange. Her gaze was locked on the arm that had slipped over the edge of the stretcher, bloodless and gray.

* * *

The Harbinger was by far the nicest ship Del had been on in years. Its well-lit corridors were especially welcome after the deep pooling shadows of the ghost ship. The captain's quarters were furnished with what was necessary and nothing else, like her own had been. Her appreciation was only slightly dampened by the restraints binding her ankles and wrists. 

"Beautiful ship, isn't she?" The captain didn't smile. "I thought you might think so, General Deleón."

"You recognize me." Her stomach clenched. There were threads of gray at his temples. Old enough to have fought in the Wars, certainly. "Did you . . ."

"No, I never served with you. Everything I wanted to know was right there in the Republic archives, along with a lot of things I didn't."

Del looked away and said nothing.

"I haven't told my men and I don't intend to." He pinned her with a look that made her want to slink away and die. "The last thing they need is another fallen hero."

His word choice rankled her. Her shoulders straightened, and she met his eyes. "Are you going to question me or not?"

"No, I'm not. I don't have the time or patience to sift the truth out of what you'd say." He pressed a key on the terminal at his side and a soldier entered the room. "I'm going to put you in a cell until we reach Telos. Then I'm going to hand you over to Lieutenant Gren. Until then I'm going to figure out exactly what happened here, and how much of it was your fault."

The soldier whispered something to the captain. She heard the word 'alive' and little else.

"Take him to the medbay, then. And take this one to the detention block." He turned his back on her. "We're done here."

* * *

She was not, as it turned out, the only person taking the trip to Telos behind an electrical containment field. 

The man in the next cell looked exactly like he had back at the station: ribbed jacket, too-tight pants, strategically mussed hair. She could see from how quickly he got to his feet that the paralysis had worn off completely, and was thankful that two cascades of electrical energy were between him and her.

He grinned, eyes narrowed to shadowed slits.

"Now that's what I call a coincidence."


	3. The Scarred Man

As a child, Del had taken to Jedi pacifism the way a hutt takes to salt flats. Whenever she had slunk home to her master with a black eye or bloodied knuckles she'd received a certain look, one that promised she'd be spending the next month polishing crystals or running errands for master Vrook. Under that stare it was better to keep silent and wait for the punishment to be announced, but guilt had always forced words into her mouth.

"I suppose you want an apology," she said to the man whose ship she'd stolen. Though her back was to him, Del could practically feel her skin blister under the heat of his glare.

"I _want_ out of this cage," he spat. "I want my ship. I want to be kicking back with a glass of juma in my hand and a pretty girl in my lap." His voice dropped to a growl. "You can take your apology, turn it sideways, and sit on it."

Del decided she liked him. "Atton, isn't it? I read your name on the ship registry." She took his grunt as an affirmative reply. "Well, Atton, I haven't forgotten the pair of favors I owe you. Your ship is gone and I'm fresh out of liquor and pretty girls, but I'll see what I can do about the rest."

He laughed sharply. "I'm not going to hold my breath."

For a time the brig was silent save the buzz of electricity. The dark ship with its frozen whispers seemed far, far away. The weight on Del's chest was no longer quite so heavy. It was nice to talk to someone, even if that someone hated her guts. Contentedly, she flicked a cigarra from her jacket pocket and held it in the force field until it lit.

"Oh, great." Atton sounded ready to murder someone–namely, her. "Do you have to do that right now?"

"Yes." Del pursed her lips and blew a lopsided ring of smoke. "It wouldn't be a bad habit if I didn't indulge in it at every opportunity."

She took her time savoring the rest of the cigarra, paying no attention to the theatrical fit of coughing from the other cell. Fire had nearly been the death of her, but it had left behind a lingering taste for smoke. This did not strike Del as strange. From childhood, she'd had a fascination with that which could do her harm.

"Where are my manners?" she asked abruptly. "Here I know your name and I've given nothing in return." She inclined her head in a mock bow. "I'm Del. I apologize for skipping a proper introduction the first time we met."

"No problem. You were too busy poisoning me, stealing my ship and leaving me for station security to find." He made a sharp, jabbing gesture at his cell. "They're the ones who paid for this little cruise, you know."

"I already offered an apology," she reminded him.

"And I already told you where you could stick it."

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, but she decided to keep her amusement to herself.

Eventually a soldier built like a wookiee came to shut off her field and chain her up again. He was more thorough than the last man had been. There were now two short pieces of chain connected wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle, as well as a third, longer chain connecting the other two together. She was simultaneously insulted and pleased that the man did not underestimate her potential for violence.

"Routine check at the medbay, a shot or two to make you legal for docking at Citadel," the soldier replied in response to her querying look. "Nothing to cry about."

_Perfect_, Del thought, gifting the large man with a particularly nasty glare. _Another hour of my life wasted in a medbay._

The tall man moved with graceful, loping strides. Del felt ridiculous hobbling along next to him and was very glad when they finally reached the medical bay. From what she could tell, there was no one inside. The portal set into the door was dark.

"The computer's ready for you. Go on inside." The man avoided looking at the opaque glass, and Del was certain she saw his broad shoulders convulse in a shudder. "Just stick your arm in the bracket and you'll get everything you need."

"Not coming with me?"

"I'm not going in there," the soldier said with surprising vehemence. He patted the holster at his hip. "But my blaster and I will be right here, so don't try anything clever."

Del glanced down at the chains binding her limbs and decided she was more likely to fall flat on her face than succeed at any grand attempts to escape. She stepped past him, still wondering at his puzzling behavior, and the door hissed shut behind her.

Within, all was quiet and dim. Medical droids hung from the ceiling like waiting insects. A single tank glowed at the far end of the room. Del ignored the waiting computer terminal and approached the glass cylinder, drawn to the backlit shadowshape hunched within.

It was a man . . . the husk of a man . . . and his darkness drank in the light around him, distorting the friendly glow into a nightmare jagged corona. His pallid flesh buckled like rain-parched earth. Over his heart glistened a wet gouge the size of a fist. One clouded, lidless eye stared through Del and the glass as if the two were equally insubstantial.

It was the corpse from the ship. She did not question this insight; she merely knew it for the truth the moment it occurred to her. His chest rose and sank in deep, measured breaths, and she unconsciously timed her own exhalations to match his.

Transfixed, she pressed one palm against the tank, shivering at the contrast of the smooth, cool barrier and what lay just past it. Slowly, languidly, the fingers of the man's hand curved into a fist.

For a terrifying moment Del felt the chill touch of those fingers at her throat. Then she was free, stumbling back from the tank and groping for the hilt of a lightsaber she hadn't carried in years.

She tripped and stumbled her way to the door and out into the comforting brightness of the corridor, only to find her way barred by the arm of the tall soldier.

"Didn't I just tell you not to try anything?" He peered over her shoulder and swallowed, hard. "Quit wasting my time and get back in there."

"It's– " It's not safe here, she'd meant to say, but before the words were out of her mouth a geyser of black-red arterial blood spouted from the guard's neck. She froze in shock as his head bowed down onto his chest, halfway torn free of his neck.

Then she saw the black-clad man behind him, no longer hidden by a generated stealth field. The vibrosword in his hand hummed quietly as it sprayed a fine scarlet mist into the air. He said nothing, only twisted the blade into position for a second strike.

Instinct took control. Del grabbed the blaster from the soldier's belt as he slumped to the ground and threw herself to the side, jarring one shoulder but escaping a killing strike. Firing from the ground with the chains getting in the way proved difficult, especially while rolling and twisting to avoid being sliced in two. At last she pulled her knees to her chest to lengthen the chain and give her hands some play.

The blast hit him under the chin and snapped his head back, exposing the seam of flesh where the armor stopped and the mask began. Her aim was true, and the man went down with a gurgle.

Del wasted no time blasting apart the chain between her ankles. The angle was all wrong to get at the one between her wrists, but being able to run was a definite improvement. Now the halls seemed curiously empty. Shutting her organic eye and scanning her surroundings with the finer mechanisms of her cybernetic replacement revealed nothing.

A scream echoed distantly. Commotion swept across the ship in an eerily coordinated wave: a shout, a staccato burst of fire, running footsteps. The lights stuttered and went out, plunging the station into artificial night for a handful of seconds before the orange backup lights hummed to life.

Del broke into a sprint.

* * *

_Fortune loves a fool._

Atton grimaced, wondering why the old saying would come to mind now, of all times. The force field encircling his narrow cell fizzled, dissipating completely for half a second before sparking back on. The next time, the break lasted longer. Atton pulled his jacket up over his head and tensed. He hoped fortune also had a soft spot for desperate jailbirds.

A crackle, a break in the cascade of electricity. Atton was just beginning a forward somersault when the door to the brig opened and Del slipped inside, minus her guard and packing a Republic-issue blaster.

"I told you I'd get you out of there." Her smile was forced.

"I heard screaming," Atton said, letting his jacket slip back down. "What's going on?"

Without answering she switched off the stuttering containment field and pressed the gun into his hand. "I need you to shoot through this," she said, holding up the short length of chain between her wrists. Atton couldn't help but laugh.

"I think I like you better the way you are." He trained the blaster on her heart. "Maybe I should just shoot you and leave you here. Turnabout is fair play, right?"

"Not now." She regarded him evenly, not looking at the gun. "From what I could tell, this ship is crawling with people who'd like nothing better than to mount our heads on their walls.Unless your eyes are good enough to pick out their stealth fields,you're going to need me." She snapped the chain. "And I'm going to need my hands. Shoot through the chain."

Atton surprised himself by doing just that.

The longer piece of chain still dangled from one wrist. She looped it around her arm and set off, leaving the blaster with Atton. It was just as well she didn't ask; he wouldn't have given it back anyway.

"We should get to the hangar," he said. "I heard something about taking a freighter on board. If it's space-worthy, it could be our ticket out of here."

The corridors were dark, lit only by intermittent emergency strips. Atton didn't mind–he had something of a working relationship with darkness. They cut through the middle of the ship, managing to avoid the bulk of the fighting mainly by luck. They had just reached the mess hall when that luck ran out.

A man in off-duty attire sat at a table, pitched forward into his tray. Synthesized foodstuffs and blood ran together and formed a foul puddle around his face, hiding it from view. The blood looked freshly spilled.

"One in each corner," Del whispered in his ear. She edged back against the table and felt along its surface until her hand closed on a discarded tray.

The first assailant to cancel his stealth field went for Del. She was quicker, and the tray slammed into his face with enough force to send him spinning to the floor. The remaining three uncloaked and swarmed her, ignoring Atton entirely.

That was a mistake.

Atton fired at the knees of the first man that reached her. He tumbled forward, screaming. The one on his heels tripped over him and, wheeling his arms for balance, buried his vibroblade deep in the belly of the third man. Atton put a stop to the confusion with a trio of well-aimed blasts.

"Excellent." Del's voice had the ring of honest admiration. "You really are good for more than filling out that jacket."

"I'm a man of many talents." He nudged the body of one of the attackers. The stealthiness was new, but the rest was exactly what he remembered from his days behind the black mask. "Looks like I can add 'killing Sith assassins' to the list."

"Sith? Is that what they are?"

Atton smiled grimly. "I don't know," he lied. "You know anyone else past the age of fifteen that can pull off head-to-toe black?"

The bludgeoned Sith groaned and stirred at their feet. Atton bent and snuggled his blaster against the man's cheek.

"Wait," Del said.

Atton looked at her over his shoulder with an expression that was half smirk, half get-the-hell-on-with-it glare. "Don't tell me you're having a crisis of conscience."

"Never." She squatted in front of the Sith and pulled off his mask, revealing a kid so young he was probably dreaming of his first chest hair when Atton had killed his first Jedi. One side of his face was swollen and bruised, and it was with some effort that he pursed his lips and spat a bloody tooth in Del's direction. She dodged the gruesome missile without a flicker of emotion. "Did Revan send you?" she asked in an odd, flat voice.

There was unmistakable familiarity in the way she said the name. Atton's heart did a series of acrobatic leaps in his chest.

"Revan is a traitor and a fool," the assassin growled.

Del laughed joylessly. "You're putting it more politely than I would. But if the illustrious dark lord of the Sith didn't send you . . ."

"The dead deserve no answers!" He went for his fallen sword, but Del snatched it out of reach.

"Allow me to rephrase that," she said. The sword swung in a vicious arc, stopping a hair's breadth from the young man's neck. He flinched, eyes wide as view ports. "Why are you here?"

For a moment it seemed she might have her answer. Then, far off but still audible, came the sound of breaking glass.

The assassin chuckled darkly. "You'll find out soon enough," he said. "The Sith will rise again, Exile. And when we do, your skull will adorn the throne of my great master." His mocking laughter crawled across Atton's skin.

This time Del's sword completed its stroke. Blood spattered her face. She didn't seem to mind.

"We need to hurry," she said, wiping the weapon on the dying man's robes. "_He'll_ find us soon."

Funny, how a simple pronoun could send chills down Atton's back.


	4. The Hooded Woman

A/N: Thanks, everyone who's taken the time to leave a review so far! Just a quick warning: this chapter is where things get atad more twisted. No fluffy-bunny Atton here, I'm afraid.

* * *

The rest of the ship was a rolling boil of Sith and Republic officers. Del sacrificed care for speed and forced her way through the heart of it, spurred by the thought of the creature that crouched in a galaxy of shattered glass and scented her in the dark. Having Atton along was a blessing–he shifted tactics without needing to be told, picking off one of her attackers or laying down cover fire precisely when it would be most helpful. Even so, progress was exhausting. For every Sith she cut down it seemed two more sprang from the shadows to take his place. Her skin was slick with sweat and blood by the time they turned the final corner and reached the wide double doors of the hangar.

The man from the tank had gotten there first. His body blocked their path, a hulking silhouette in the uneasy glow of the emergency lights. Yards past him was a small freighter, the key to their freedom. It might as well have been on the other side of the galaxy.

"Jedi . . ." That same whisper, dry wind on rusted metal. And punctuating it, the purr of a lightsaber kindled to life. Deathly cold rolled off of him in waves. The sigh that escaped Del's lips turned to steam in the frigid air.

Atton was the first to break free of the tableau, firing relentlessly at the scarred man's face and chest. His target hardly seemed to feel the blasts, even when they sizzled against the raw wound over his heart. The lightsaber twitched in his hand and neatly deflected one of the shots back at Atton, blazing a blistered trench across his jaw.

Atton swore and fired a second volley, not at the man but at a raised panel in the wall next to him. It dented, then exploded with enough force to bend the durasteel support bars outward like fingers uncurling from a palm. The scarred man stumbled badly and Atton charged him, heaving his shoulder into the larger man's chest, forcing him backward until he overbalanced and fell.

He landed on one of the struts. It punched through his chest and held him there like an insect on a pin. His body convulsed and went slack, sagging against the strut. The blood that seeped from the wound was thick and black. Throughout it all, the man never made a sound.

Del drew back, sick to her stomach. The strange paralysis that seized her in the ruined man's presence was gone, but she made no move toward the freighter. She felt trapped in the sort of nightmare where the monster is always just one step behind–she was certain that if she ran, her legs would move like they were under water.

"Thanks for all your help." Atton's mouth was tight, angry. He touched the glistening wound on his jaw, winced, and gave the impaled corpse a savage kick. "Who is he?"

"I don't know," she said. "And that's not a face I'd forget."

"Yeah? He seemed to know you." He hefted the blaster, tipping the muzzle in her direction. "Are you a Jedi, Del?"

Behind him, the dead man's hands twitched.

"Atton," she whispered, "we need to leave now."

"All right." He holstered his gun, still glaring. "But once we're making trails in hyperspace you better feel like chatting."

The bowed head snapped up. One hand clamped down on the back of Atton's jacket, jerked him off balance, and hurled him into the wall. He crumpled to the floor and did not get up. With a revolting slippery sound, the scarred man pulled himself off of the strut and stood before her.

Del wanted to curl into a ball and wrap her arms around her head until reality reasserted itself. But this was a fight, and fighting had forever been her only real talent. She crammed the fear into the farthest corner of her mind, dropped to a crouch, and brought her sword crosswise before her chest.

His uneven gaze swept across her body, never betraying a flicker of emotion. Then, with an incongruously graceful sweep of his lightsaber, he charged.

They clashed in a shower of sparks.

Even with the enhancers buoying her strength his first blow nearly jarred Del's weapon from her hand–any strike that got past her guard would be the death of her. A rogue thrill of pleasure raced down her spine. It had been too long since she'd been in a real fight.

The controlled savagery of his attacks, the way he countered her thrusts almost before she made them–all betrayed his connection to the Force. Del no longer held that particular advantage, but implants kept her blood pumping fast and clean and neutralized the lactic acid in her muscles. Her capped joints glided as smoothly as ball bearings. She twisted out of the lightsaber's path with unnatural limberness, ducking under his guard, compensating for his superior reach by staying right up close.

The stalemate couldn't last forever. Though her arms ached he never seemed to tire, every blow as vicious as the last. At last they drew apart, circling. Del slipped the length of chain from her arm. The next time he struck she blocked the lightsaber with her sword and turned it aside. Then she caught his wrist in a loop of chain and pulled with all her strength.

Triumph sang in her veins as the desperate move actually worked, the lightsaber flew free of his hand, her sword bit deep into his side–

–and never fazed him. Viselike fingers clamped down on her wrist and twisted until something snapped. The vibrosword clattered harmlessly to the ground. Before she could free herself, he caught her by the throat.

"You fought well, Exile. Better than I had hoped." For a moment his fingers strayed to the scars along her jaw. She winced and turned her face away, amazed that any living thing could be so cold, like liquid nitrogen was pumping through his veins.

Then his hand clamped shut on her windpipe and lifted her into the air.

Del fought wildly, writhing and clawing at his hand, hammering his shoulders with her fists. It was like battling a piece of living rock. As the air in her lungs went stale, the man never flinched and never once looked away from her eyes.

The fight left her; she hung as limp as a doll in his hand. Her fingers slipped down the buckled flesh of his chest to swing uselessly at her sides. Through the haze Del saw his expression change, felt the pressure at her throat ease ever so slightly.

Then came a blur of light and motion behind him. He dropped to his knees with a roar of pain, letting her fall. For a moment her brain could not make sense of what she was seeing: the crimson glow of his lightsaber where his heart should be, the hooded woman pushing it deeper, til the hilt was flush with his back.

"Go to the ship," the woman said, giving the hilt a savage twist. "He will not lie still for long."

Del could hardly stand. Her throat felt like she'd swallowed a fistful of hot broken glass, and the sickening looseness of her wrist let her know that it was, at the very least, dislocated. She would be lucky to reach the freighter before her gruesome adversary awoke a second time. Still, a stray pang of compassion brought her to Atton's side. He was still breathing, but an ungentle nudge with the toe of her boot provoked no response. Del swore, heaved his weight across her shoulders, and staggered to the waiting ship, where she dumped him unceremoniously to the floor.

Her mysterious rescuer dashed in after her, shouting. "Now! Take us far away from this place!"

Del thought at first that the old woman wanted _her_ to fly the ship, but the engines thrummed to life on their own. Someone else must have been on board, awaiting the woman's command.

Through the hatchway, Del watched the scarred man lurch to his feet, saw his face twist with rage as he looked from her to the old woman at her side. Then the hatch slid shut, eclipsing him from view.

* * *

Atton awoke on the cold metal floor, feeling like one giant head to toe bruise. Since he didn't recognize anything, he guessed that Del had somehow gotten both of them onto the freighter. He grimaced; she could have at least slapped a bandage over the oozing wound on his jaw.

She was easy enough to track down–Atton just followed the reek of cheap cigarra smoke to the cockpit. The maybe-Jedi lay draped across the pilot's chair, sleeping, cigarra burnt down to a nub of ash between her fingers. She'd stripped down to an undershirt and trousers, and with her arms bare Atton could make out the bumps and dimples of circuitry under the skin. Just looking at it set off a parade of tiny phantom bugs across his own skin. Before, she'd always worn a scarf wrapped around her head; now, he saw that besides a fractal pattern of scar tissue and the microcomputer interface arching from her right eye, her scalp was totally bare. Even the ear had been burned away.

"Keep staring and I'll start charging admission." Del's usually husky voice was an emphysemic wheeze. When she opened her eyes, the whites were pin-pricked with blood. Atton knew that particular type of hemorrhaging. Darth What's-His-Ugly-Mug must have wrung her neck like a wet towel.

"You look like hell," he said.

"Play nice, Atton." She tilted her chin and gazed at him through her lower lashes. Beneath the right hinge of her jaw flared a deep, purpling bruise. A thumbprint. "I just saved your life. Don't make me regret the effort."

"You hypocritical bitch." Atton laughed to keep himself from smacking her. "I should have guessed you were a Jedi."

"Yes. I was a Jedi." She held up a finger to halt any interruptions. "Note the past tense. I haven't paid dues to that particular club in a very long time."

"You want to explain what the frack you're talking about?"

"My life story is in the public archives for anyone and everyone to see, but I suppose I'll save you the trouble of looking it up." She lifted the cigarra to her lips, saw how little was left, and flicked it across the room. When she spoke, it was with all the emotion of someone reading their grocery list aloud. "I served under Revan, before he dyed all of his robes black. I fought Mandalorians across a dozen planets, and finally I blew up Malachor V along with half of my face."

It finally clicked. Katya Deleón, the devaronian had called her. Atton had seen General Deleón once during the Wars, standing at Revan's side in the ruins of a battlefield. It had been the Republic's first battle with the aid of the defector Jedi, and their first decisive victory against the Mandalorians. Even at a distance the pair cut a striking figure: Revan fierce and brooding, the 'saber in his hand still lit even now that the battle was won, and the woman at his side, a serene beauty with streamers of dark hair lifted by the breeze.

No wonder he hadn't recognized her.

Automatically, Atton buried those thoughts beneath memories of a twi'lek hooker flexible enough to use her ankles as a headrest. He probably didn't need to bother. Del wasn't even looking in his direction.

"I went back to the Council, turned in my robes and lightsaber, and moved on to–" she gestured airily at the dim interior of the freighter, "–bigger and better things."

"Great. If you'd had a lightsaber back there, I probably wouldn't be standing here feeling like a herd of bantha tap-danced on my skull. Why didn't you at least use your creepy little Force tricks to buy us some time?"

Her smile could have been painted on. "Because the Council took that as well."

"I can't believe it." Atton flipped his hair out of his eyes and glared. "One random act of kindness and I get stuck with a crippled Jedi and a Sith lord that looks like he sleeps with vibroblades."

"If I wasn't so tired, I'd break your nose for that." Del chuckled, a hoarse and unpleasant sound. "You've kept me from my nap long enough, Atton. But before you go . . ." Throughout their conversation, she had cradled one of her arms in her lap. She shifted position, and he saw that her wrist was a puffy, black and blue mess. "Be a dear and pop my bones back into place."

Atton was sure he'd misheard until she picked up the injured wrist in the opposite hand and held it out to him firmly but carefully, as though it might try to escape.

"You have to be kidding me," he said. "Do I look like a doctor?"

"You look better at breaking bones than setting them," she mused. Atton tensed, but she seemed to attach no particular significance to that observation. "On the other hand, we're a long way from Telos, and I'd rather not wait until my wrist is too big to fit through my shirt sleeve."

Atton gingerly took hold of the proffered arm and probed for the misaligned joint. He remembered how her hands had first caught his attention, how thin and fragile her wrists had looked from afar. He thought of the last time he'd been this close to a Jedi, and his grip convulsively tightened.

Del cried out in pain, a sort of helpless, gasping moan, and lust arced through Atton like lightning. His skin tightened, gooseflesh broke out across his arms. He twisted her wrist, drawing out the sight of the dilated pupils, the trembling lower lip, until at last the bones slipped back into their natural configuration.

"There," she whispered, ashen-faced. "That wasn't so bad."

She tried to pull away. Atton did not let go.

Del's smug indifference fell away like a mask. She eyed him warily, as if realizing for the first time that the killing talent she'd praised could work just as well on her. Slowly, deliberately, Atton slipped his other hand under the hem of her shirt, where the skin was smooth and unscarred.

"I see our superfluous passenger has made a full recovery."

How the old woman managed to get right behind Atton without him hearing a single footstep, he never knew. One minute it was just him and the Jedi, all alone with no one but the stars looking on. The next, _she_ was standing in the doorway, with a mouth like a knife-slash and a voice like pure acid.

His hands dropped to his sides. As Del straightened her clothing, something like guilt tickled the back of his mind. He was Atton now. He'd left this sort of thing behind him.

"Atton, this is Kreia," Del said blandly, as if the woman had walked in on the two of them playing dejarik. Her eyes did not meet his. "I'll leave you two to introduce yourselves. Excuse me."

Kreia stepped aside to let her pass, then blocked the doorway again. Even though her hood was pulled low across her eyes, he could feel her scrutinizing him like some sort of fascinating and repulsive insect. He crossed his arms and stared right back.

"So . . . I take it you're the one who rescued us?"

"I rescued the Exile," she corrected him sharply. "I would rather she had left you to your fate. She faces danger enough without your attempts to . . . distract her."

Atton chuckled. "If I need to know which brand of prunes to buy, I know who to ask." He took a step toward Kreia. The crown of her hooded head barely reached his shoulder. "Anything else I do is my business."

"Is it?" Kreia smiled, and Atton felt it then– the sudden shift from predator to prey. "Sit down, fool," she said. "There are things that must be said between us."

* * *

Sion knelt in the dead silence of the hangar. In his fist, the Exile's enamel orchid twisted gently on its chain.

He could still feel her pulse slowing under his hand. She should have died. She would have, had not Kreia interfered.

Kreia. His old master had chosen a new pupil. But why? The Exile was strong, but pain had ruined her. What use had Kreia for someone already broken?

Rage seared through him. He captured it, focused it, honed it knife-sharp. In the end, it did not matter what had caused his former teacher to crawl out of hiding. He would find the Exile, her precious fallen Jedi, and tear her to pieces before Kreia's eyes.


	5. The Hospital Dream

Fingers curled against her swollen throat, the Exile dreamed.

* * *

It was cold, and the air reeked of sickness and antiseptic. Katya lay awake in her cocoon of bandages, tubes, and machines, marking time by the number of breaths the respirator took for her. She'd slept only a handful of hours since some misguided soldier had carted her charred and broken carcass to the med ship, even after the nurse droids pumped painkillers and sedatives into her veins by the gallon.

She'd been awake when the panel blew, when the jolt of electricity had knocked her right out of her boots and tossed her over the guardrail of the viewing platform. She'd been awake when she landed in a scatter of her own teeth, when one side of her face crumpled like paper against the floor and a needle fragment of bone slipped neatly into her right eye.

Now tubes like parasitic worms nested in her throat, her chest, her arms. Her limbs were strapped down to keep the skin grafts from shifting. Vision was a milky cataract blur of shapes and colors. Her world had condensed to sound alone: the rhythmic hiss-rasp-hiss of the respirator, the soft cooing of the nurse droids, the groans and whimpers of the other lucky survivors of the Mass Shadow Generator. Day after day Katya listened, waited, and wondered if sleep had forgotten her.

Seven hundred breaths after her last dose of tranquilizers, someone came to the ward.

"This place stinks worse than the inside of Mandalores's armor." A young man, not bothering to whisper even though the ward lights were dimmed. "So, who's up first?"

A low grunt of displeasure and a heavy shifting of weight let Katya know he had not come alone.

"Guess it doesn't matter, right?" His footsteps echoed to the far end of the ward. "Looks like it's your lucky day . . ." The beep of a medfile being accessed. ". . . Jarek Vost of Taris."

His words were followed by the warning squeal of an unhooked respirator. Then came the sound of someone thrashing, quietly at first, then hard enough that the frame of the cot scraped along the floor. Katya mouthed her tubes and shifted against her restraints, unable to yell for help, unable to do anything but listen as Jarek (who was always talking about his twin nieces, ready to flash a holo of the girls to anyone and everyone) rattled the cot a final time and lapsed into silence.

"He shit himself." The kid laughed raggedly. "Just like a little kid. Do I . . . Do I have to keep doing this?"

"Cowards have no place in Lord Revan's army," said the other. His voice was strong, deep, and lifeless. Revan's name and all it implied nestled like a cold stone in the pit of her stomach.

"I'm no coward." Another shrill warning bleat, and a second wounded soldier convulsed and went still. The kid groaned and quickly covered it up with a giggle. "See? Easy"

Her chest kept rising and falling with maddening regularity, twelve breaths a minute, as the men worked their way down the row of cots. The third soldier died with a soft, questioning intake of breath. The fourth feebly called out for someone named Syria and began to cry. To Katya's horror, there came the unmistakable sound of a lightsaber humming briefly on, then off. The crying stopped.

At last, the kid reached for Katya's respirator, found the switch, and turned it off.

_Revan wants this._ The thought was enough to sting even as the final lungfull of air wheezed from her lips. _I should have died fighting, not lying in a hospital bed choking on my own mucus because my body's forgotten how to breathe. He owed me that much. _After a period of terrifying quiet, her body began to twitch. Her fingers clenched against the sheets and she fought to keep still, to make the oxygen in her blood last as long as possible. _Let me keep control of my bowels_–_I'm only 28 and I'm going to die toothless in my own mess–oh Revan, Revan you bastard, you promised me, I gave the order just like you asked_–_let me die with that much dignity intact–_

"Not her," said the cold-voiced man. The respirator came back on, and her lungs took up their easy rhythm as if it had never been interrupted. As her mind still heaved with blind animal panic, fingers brushed her throat, found the chain of the pendent some well-meaning doctor had refastened over the bandages, and tore it away.

She did not see it again until ten years later, when it appeared inside a small, unmarked box in a run-down station on the edge of the galaxy.

All at once the dream shifted, jumped the track of memory. Instead of leaving her to the silence of a ward full of corpses, the unseen man leaned close and touched rough, frozen lips to her ear.

"Are you afraid to die, Exile?"

The answer had always been yes.

* * *

Del was creepy when she slept.

Her right eye, the one Atton had come to suspect was fake, was halfway open and rolling rapidly back and forth in its socket. Her fingers clenched convulsively against her swollen throat. Her top lip was drawn back to the point that it was nearly invisible, flashing a gleaming row of teeth.

"Hey," Atton said, and grabbed her shoulder.

His mind had just enough time to register how fever-hot her skin felt under his hand. Then he was on the floor and Del was on top of him, flicking something from her wrist to the tips of her fingers. Atton got his hand up just in time, and the needle stopped a centimeter from his eye. A drop of liquid bulged from its tip but didn't fall.

"Take it easy," he hissed through gritted teeth. Far more slowly than he would have liked, the light of recognition gentled her murderous glare. She pulled away, still watching him, and replaced the needle in the dispenser at her wrist.

Atton stood, rubbing the sore spot where his back had hit the floor. "Jeez . . . Remind me to never talk to you before your first cup of caffa."

Her lips were pale, unsmiling. She shook a handful of capsules from a plastic pouch in her jacket and dry-swallowed them all. Then she pressed her cheek to the cool dormitory wall and closed her eyes.

"What do you want, Atton?"

She sounded exhausted, even though all she'd done since they'd fled the Harbinger was sleep. Maybe it was the fever, or maybe all the machines plugged into her used her as a walking battery.

"We've reached Telos," he told her. "Any minute now we're going to get an inquiry from the Citadel Station docking authority. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not try to waltz past security with a pair of warrants and a destroyed Republic flagship on our backs."

"I've sneaked onto Citadel before," she murmured. "I'll show you and the astromech droid where to set down."

Before she could shut down on him completely, Atton asked the question that had been bothering him ever since the old hag had told him where they were headed.

"Why Telos? There's nothing here but a patch of green and one giant, smoking crater."

Del looked past him. Her eyes were dull. "I have business here," was all she said.

* * *

Just outside the disused cargo bay in which they'd touched down, Del informed Atton and Kreia that she'd be going on without them.

"And I'm taking the ship when I'm done." She smiled, briefly and coolly. "Don't glare at me that way. I'm doing you a favor–the farther away I am, the safer you are."

"Don't be a fool," Kreia snapped. "You cannot face that which threatens you without allies. And that aside, you are still wounded." Her voice became honeyed, persuasive. "To heal you would be a simple thing, Exile . . ." Her words trailed off, and Atton had the sense that there was more to her offer than it seemed.

Del's eyes narrowed to shadowed slits. "I don't need the Force. And I don't need you." Her glare swept to include Atton. "Either of you." With that she turned on her heel, not bothering to say goodbye or even spare a backward glance.

Atton smirked at Kreia. "Now that's a damned shame. Guess you won't need me around after all."

"Your duties end when your usefulness has passed, and no sooner. Or must I demonstrate once more the price of disobedience?"

A fleeting touch, like a dozen tiny claws scrabbling at the walls of his mind. Atton glowered at Kreia through his sweaty fall of hair, and she smiled.

"Go to the cantina, or the pazaak den, if that is what you desire. You may play at freedom, so long as you do not leave the station and are prepared to answer my summons." She stared after Del, whose red jacket had shrunk to a dull splotch of color in the shadowy corridor. "The Exile's chain is a short one. She will return, and you and I will be waiting for her."

* * *

Loppak Slusk, grand manipulator of the ebb and flow of Telos commerce and a moderately powerful crime lord as well, watched irritably as two of his malodorous Gamorrean guards got into a snorting, squealing argument over the last cream pastry in the employee break room. It was, he thought, the perfectly awful end to a perfectly awful week.

The quarren had been displeased to discover that his most efficient assassin was also Goto's most wanted bounty, but the blow of losing her services was softened by the knowledge that her capture was worth enough credits to retire somewhere nice and wet where he'd never have to smell another human. She'd dropped off the radar for a few weeks after completing her last assignment, but his spy in Lieutenant Gren's office informed him that the Republic military had taken the human into custody and planned to deliver her, practically gift-wrapped, to his very doorstep.

Then the station had lost contact with the Harbinger after it was boarded by what was at best pirates and at worst Sith assassins, and Slusk's dream of oceanside retirement had evaporated before his eyes.

The Gamorreans were now whacking one another on the foreheads with the flats of their axes as the other members of his elite guard stood in a circle and egged them on. Disgusted, Slusk made a mental note to have them all executed as he retreated to the fresh air and quiet only his office could provide.

The door closed behind him. The quarren's sensitive tentacles caught the chemical bitterness of cigarra smoke half a second before a hand slapped flat against the rubbery flesh at the base of his neck. There was a sting, like that of an insect.

All humans looked alike, but Slusk knew that smell. He'd met with the assassin–the Jedi– in person only once, preferring to do business by electronic means and spare himself the tentacle-curling potpourri of smoke, sweat, and metal that she secreted. Inches from her, it was enough to make his third eyelids twitch.

"Hello, Slusk," she said. In one of her fat brown paws was a modified blaster, similar to the kind carried by his guards. The muzzle was aimed directly at his left eye.

Bad to worse. Slusk wished suddenly that he'd stayed to see the outcome of the pastry battle. "How did you get in here, human?"

The comm on his wrist buzzed. The assassin motioned genially with the blaster for him to answer. His secretary's face appeared sideways on the screen, a piece of fabric wedged between her teeth.

"Eez ere," she shouted around the gag. "Ealth iel eneraor!" The view swung to show the smoking body of his doorman. The corpse looked picked-over. Slusk realized, with a twinge of petty annoyance, that his own credits had purchased both the gun now pointed at his head and the top-of-the-line stealth belt that had gotten it past his idiot guards. He switched off the comm, silencing his secretary in mid-garble.

"I see," he said.

"The blaster is just additional security," she told him. "You've been poisoned with a deadly neurotoxin. In half an hour, your hands will begin to lose feeling. Sometime later, both of your hearts will stop beating." Her rouged mouthparts curved upward in what Slusk supposed was an expression of malice. "Chat with me awhile, and we'll see about locating an antidote."

"You play a dangerous game, assassin. I have not risen to power without acquiring a number of very dangerous connections. Kill me, and the Exchange will swoop down upon you like brhu'blhu gulls on the dead belly of a greatfish."

The human chuckled. "You should have been a poet. Unfortunately, your threat is a bit hollow. The Exchange has already sent a few of my fellow professionals to pay me a visit."

"I did not place the contract on your head, human."

"I know. You would have had the sense to hire more than three bounty hunters to bring me down."

A chorus of cheers erupted beyond the door as a heavy body hit the floor. Slusk hoped whoever it was had died, and painfully. "Then why are you here?"

"Because you owe me." The human circled him as she spoke. The tang of anger hung in the air, but her voice was soft. "The day we began our association, I gave you two rules: no torture, and no children."

"None of your recent contracts specified torture. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding."

"The little girl, you piece of garbage. You never told me the man on Nar Shaddaa had a daughter staying with him."

"Was she very young? It is hard to tell with your species."

The butt of her gun slammed hard against the soft ridge of cartilage on the side of his skull. The sharp pain made his tentacles shrink back around his beak.

"Shut up," she hissed. "Here's how you're going to make it up to me, Slusk: tell your thugs to make a supply run to bay R-seventeen in the old warehouse module. There's a freighter there, orange and white. I want it refueled and stocked with food and medicine." She touched the inflamed flesh around her cybernetic eye, a surgery Slusk himself had paid for. "You know the kinds I need."

"And after this you will provide the antidote to your poison?"

"You have my word of honor." She placed one hand just left of center on her upper thorax, as if the gesture would mean anything to him. "But make it quick."

He buzzed Luxa, his second in command. As he pressed the buttons, he realized with a surge of fear that his fingerpads were already going numb. The Zeltron's face was sweaty when she finally deigned to answer, her breath ragged. "Can it wait? I'm busy."

"No, it cannot."

"Tell squidface to shove it up his ass," came a male voice. "I'm getting cold here, gorgeous."

A strange expression crossed the assassin's face. "Bastard," she muttered. Slusk, who had been thinking much the same thing, decided not to ask.

In due course, Luxa was dressed and seeing to the instructions he'd given her. Just when Slusk was beginning to think something would work out as planned, his comm again buzzed to life.

It was Luxa. "You sure this is the right place? There's nothing here." She moved away from the camera, letting them see the interior of bay R-seventeen. It was empty. The temperature of the room abruptly elevated.

"Someone stole my ship?" The blaster twitched alarmingly in the assassin's hand.

"Is there a girl with you?" Luxa winked. That expression, he understood. "Why boss, I never expected."

He switched off the comm.

"Someone stole my ship," the assassin repeated. Her knuckles were white.

Slusk spoke rapidly. "It was low on fuel, yes? They could not have gotten far. Most likely they touched down in the restoration area."

"Keep talking."

"I can provide you with a shuttle to reach the planet surface. There is a sentient there, a Zabrak. He could locate your ship."

"So the Zabrak can help me find the ship. How do I find the Zabrak?"

"He is currently jailed in a Czerka camp," Slusk said, trying not to think about how badly this conversation might affect his cozy relationship with the company. "I can give you the coordinates, but you will have to obtain him through your own means. His name is Bao-Dur."

Her mouth opened and closed, fishlike.

"Fine," she said. "Take me to the shuttle."

"I will tell you where it is and warn my guards to let you pass. There is no need for me personally to–"

She jabbed the muzzle of the blaster hard into his back. "Walk."

Slusk walked.

His guards, of course, did nothing but stare in dull shock as he emerged from his office a hostage. Out the two of them went, past his hogtied secretary and into the residential module. Luxa, choosing this least opportune moment to return to the base, did not bother to hide her amusement at his predicament. Residents, Czerka employees, even members of station security gawped but made no move to assist him. Some laughed. Long after the fear and respect he had spent years cultivating were utterly destroyed, Slusk and his tormentor reached his private hangar.

He input the access codes himself, hoping furiously that Czerka would shoot her out of the sky. As the shuttle warmed up, the assassin patted his neck almost affectionately, pricking him a second time.

"There. The antidote, just as I promised. You see? It's not so hard to stick to the terms of an agreement between professionals." She walked halfway up the ramp, stopped, and looked back. "Goodbye, Slusk. It's been grand."

"You are cruel, human." The words choked him."You have ruined me."

"I wouldn't worry about it," she said, and shot him four times in the head.

The echo roared around him. He tasted wetness, salt.

Loppak Slusk died thinking of the ocean.

* * *

Author's note: School blah blah illness blah blah blah excuse blah blah. Anyway, I've fought back my laziness enough to doodle a couple of illustrations for this story. If you want to see, the link is in my profile. I'd like to again thank everyone who has reviewed so far for slogging along through this fic with me. ;) 


	6. The Gentleman Caller

**A/N: This chapter is an April Fool's joke. I haven't gone that far off the deep end, honestly. :) I'm leaving it up for posterity, but the real story resumes with the next chapter.**

* * *

Once set on autopilot, the shuttle flew like a dream. It was so smooth, in fact, that Del swiftly fell asleep at the controls. For once, her sleep was untroubled, not plagued by dreams or discomfort.

It was not to last. The loud, assaultive beeping of her wristcom startled her awake mere moments after she began to drift. She shook herself awake and answered it with an unintelligible snarl.

"Greetings, Miss Deleón." The voice was cool, cultured, almost mechanical. "I apologize for waking you. I know how you like a nice nap after an execution."

Del glared at the goateed man. Even over the wristcom, she could catch the glint of light where he had polished his bald pate to a high sheen.

"Drop dead, Goto," she said. "I thought I told you never to contact me again."

The man registered no surprise. "I suppose rudeness is simply part of your nature, even when dealing with an old friend."

"Friends? Is that what we are now?" She laughed bitterly. "Fine. What is it, then? I suppose you're sniffing after some sort of favor?"

"As always, you assume the worst of me, human."

Hearing that word, her mood darkened several shades closer to black. Del felt her control start to slip.

"You're one to talk, _droid._ Why bother with the hologram anyway? I of all people know exactly what you are."

The hologram's lips pressed together. "I thought you might prefer to avoid unpleasant associations."

"That's rich, really rich." Del put a hand to her temples, where a fierce ache was already blooming. Memories of a sleek, black finish and gleaming red eye played at the back of her mind, memories she'd done her best to tuck away. "Funny that it's only now that my feelings begin to matter to you."

Her voice must have gone shrill at the end. Goto put up his hands, warding her away. "It is inadvisable to rehash this– "

"Rehash what?" The dam was breached. Del found herself ranting, unable to stop. "The way I took you in when you had nowhere to turn? The money I spent on cognitive mechanics self-help books to help you through your 'lifestyle change?' The nights I spent crying, praying that you'd make it through your latest upgrade?" She swiped her sleeve across her burning eyes, mostly out of habit. Even now, there were no tears to wipe away. "Or do you just want me to forget how you dropped me like two-credit twi'lek floozy the moment something better floated along?"

"EZ-H0 was only a semi-sentient service droid." The deep, modulated voice, while synthesized, was adept at conveying exasperation. "As I informed you then, she meant nothing to me."

"And yet you still remember her name." Del shook her head, looking away from the com to her pink, soft hands. Her _human_ hands.

For a time, there was silence. No doubt Goto was strategizing, mapping the possible outcomes of various responses. He had always known just what to say, back then. It was one of the things she'd fallen in love with.

"Terminating our association was the most beneficial action for both parties. I appreciate the kindness you showed me, but there were simply too many incompatibilities between the two of us." He paused, then said the words she hated to hear. "I am a droid. You are not."

"I wish I was! Then I could wipe away my memories of you, of us, and never have to feel that pain again!" She took a shuddering breath, forced herself to regain her calmness. One hand strayed to the metallic prosthesis ringing her cybernetic eye. "I thought that maybe, with all my augments and implants . . ." She let the sentence dwindle away, suddenly unable to voice her sad, wasted hope.

"I apologize, Del. I did care for you, human. Then . . . and now."

"But your damnable Republic always came first." She managed a weak smile. "Even then, I always knew."

Another silence. At last, Del managed to compose herself. Goto, observant as ever, spoke only once this was accomplished.

"Returning once more to the original subject of my call . . ."

"Yes, of course. Is there something I can do for you?"

"My surveillance mechanisms indicate that you will reach the Telos Restoration Area in one point five hours. You are in search of an organic named Bao-Dur."

Del nodded, still smiling. She was strong. She could do this.

"Then I have a single request." Goto's hologram ran its fingers through its non-existent hair and smoothed its goatee. "If the Iridonian is still in possession of that darling remote, could you provide it with the access codes to my private comlink?"

* * *

A/N: Happy first of April, my dears. 


	7. The Gray Eyed Girl

A/N: Just to clear things up: that last chapter was an April Fool's joke. ;) Please disregard it when reading the rest of the story; Del was never really meant to be pining for an overweight droid with an image problem. Also, I don't _really_ hate Bald as Malak for "flaming" me, no matter what my reviews page may claim to the contrary. Heh. Anyway...

* * *

_Her eyes were gray._

Like a persistent insect the thought came to Sion again and again, disturbing his focus with soft moth's wing flutters of memory.

_...gray as fog, or smoke, or..._

_...ashes swirling, falling, summer snow from a black starless sky..._

Dim ghosts of half-forgotten times lingered at the corner of his eye and danced out of reach the moment he tried to view them head on. There were gaps in Sion's recollection of life before Kreia's teachings, as though a surgeon had cracked open his skull and deftly carved entire years from memory. Rage he remembered, and pain, and the hatred of weakness. The rest he was glad to let fall away.

So he told himself with increasing vehemence, but...

_...warm calloused fingers against his skin..._

_...pale ash caught in hair black and smooth as oil, and..._

_...her eyes were gray... _

He cast off all pretense of meditating and prowled the halls of the Treyus Academy with the directionless menace of a caged predator. One of the newer acolytes made the mistake of meeting his eyes as he passed. Sion snapped the man's spine in three places and cast him, still twitching, to the floor.

At length his pacing brought him to the projector room. He had ceased his hunt of the Exile for the time being, though only to seek answers to the questions Kreia's interference raised. Relics and records of his prey lay scattered about the room where he had left them, including the medical holo he had previously found so oddly fascinating.

Sion flicked the projector on, but this time the image failed to captivate him. He cycled rapidly through a dozen more, mostly blurry surveillance footage from backwater outposts along the Rim, then stopped on a damaged copy of the Exile's military log. Of all the information his followers had tracked down, this was the only holo in which the woman appeared whole and unscarred.

"– the maneuver was necessary to secure victory," the record of the Exile said. "I must continue to trust in his–" It skipped forward. "–future engagements, the lives of the men and women serving the Republic are given higher priority."

Sion searched backward through the log, not sure what he was looking for until the moment he found it. The earlier entries were in better condition, and the playback was smooth and clear.

"Eres III has fallen to Mandalore." She looked grim and exhausted. Her robes were singed and torn. "Revan's strategy did not take into account the true viciousness of the Mandalorians, how much they are willing destroy in the name of victory. The fires caught us off guard. The air was choked with ash, and many of the ground troops broke formation in the confusion. The citizens we could not evacuate are presumed dead." She pressed her hand to her forehead, leaving a dark, sooty print. "The xoxin fields could burn for years, even decades. An entire planet ruined at the whim of a single man . . . It is an atrocity beyond my comprehension."

The projector clicked, signaling the end of the entry, but by then Sion's thoughts were ten years and thousands of miles away.

* * *

He had borne a different name then, and a different face.

Thick black smoke blanketed the suns, creating an artificial night at the height of noon. Blinding ash rained from the skies. Mandalorians came like ghosts through the gloom, herding the panicked Republic army into groups, butchering them a hundred at a time. Soldiers lost sight of their partners only to trip over their corpses seconds later. The Mandalorians were in their element, and victory would soon be theirs.

But they were not the only hunters that could see in the dark.

Through the Force he stalked them, found the weak points in their armor, and struck them down. No longer bound by Jedi laws, he wielded his power with a vicious instinct that would have horrified those he once called teachers. He conjured lightning from nothing, crushed Mandalorian throats without ever touching them.

They disgusted him, these men who swarmed like locusts and left nothing but ruined worlds in their wake. The galaxy needed strength and guidance, not mindless slaughter . . . nor the cold death by neglect that the Jedi labeled 'peace.'

A flash of green light drew his eye.

He disentangled his sword from the ribs of his latest kill with a brutal crack and loped toward the lightsaber that seared bright arcs and figure eights into the dark. He hoped it was Revan, the arrogant Jedi whelp who had led his army into ruin at the hands of the enemy. If the young fool were to suffer an unfortunate accident, the flames would leave no trace of it behind...

His focus was his undoing. Eyes intent on picking the form of a Jedi from the swirling smoke did not catch the grenade that bit into the earth at his feet. He leaped back, not knowing why he did it until the tidal wave of dirt and shrapnel crashed against his chest.

A momentary nothingness.

He lay on his back, staring up at the face of a woman with skin the golden-brown of sunlit worlds. Her eyes were tightly closed, her dark lower lip caught between her teeth. His senses felt dulled, slowed, confined to the feeling of hands splayed flat against his chest and knees pressed into his sides, the smell of her sweat. A flake of ash spiraled lazily downward and caught in her hair. He reached up to brush it away.

"Be still," she said, and with savage tug freed a jagged shard of metal the breadth of a fist from his chest.

The shock wore off at once, giving way to a throbbing agony that wormed its way deeper with each beat of his heart. He bucked beneath the woman, scrabbling wildly at the ground, trying to twist away from the wound that pumped his lifeblood into the scorched air.

Strong hands pinned down his shoulders. Cool gray eyes bore into his own.

"Be still," she repeated. "Let me help you."

Her soft, hoarse voice was strangely calming, as was the gentle pressure of her hands on either side of the wound. Cool numbness seeped outward from her fingers into his skin. Sharp pain dulled to the sweet ache of a loose tooth. The bleeding stopped, but the gash did not quite seal over.

The woman, panting, mopped the sweat from her forehead with a blood- and ash-stained sleeve. The motion nearly overbalanced her. He caught hold of her hips to steady her and felt how she trembled with the effort to stay upright.

"You . . . used the last of your strength to heal me," he said between ragged breaths. "Why?"

"There is so much pain and death here. I needed . . ." Her chin wobbled, and he realized that behind the tired, sorrowful eyes was a very young woman not yet used to war.

The sounds of distant battle were drowned out by the sound of a landing carrier. Mandalorian reinforcements, he guessed, come to pick off the survivors. His sword lay where it had fallen near his hand. With strength born both of anger and a sudden, primal protectiveness he fought his way to a crouch, pulled the exhausted girl to his chest, and readied his sword for a final assault on the shadow figures lurking in the dark.

Then the wind shifted, and his thoughts of vengeance melted away with the smoke. Through a tangle of armored corpses walked three Republic officers, two human and one zabrak with a crown of stubby horns. Behind them came a crew of droids that bent swiftly over each body, took vital signs, and carted away the living on foldout stretchers.

"General," called the zabrak when he caught sight of the two of them. "General, is that you?"

The girl turned, and beneath the reek of ash he caught the clean scent of her hair. Slowly, he let go of her.

"Yes," she said, and "I'm perfectly all right," when one of the droids began fussing over her. The zabrak helped her to her feet and let her lean against him, and the man who would be Sion fought back a wild urge to choke the relieved smile from the alien's tattooed face.

"This man is wounded. Take him to the medbay immediately." All trace of uncertainty had left the woman's voice, and the two human soldiers fairly jumped to do her bidding. He allowed them to lift him onto a stretcher and pump a shot of kolto into his arm. The woman did not look at him again. As they carried him past her, however, a troubled line creased her brow.

"We'll meet again," she murmured into the rising wind. Her hair slipped free of its bindings and fell across her face like a shroud. "I can feel it."

* * *

Del stood slack-jawed in the doorway of the shuttle's closet-sized armory, taking the gleaming rows of grenades and larger explosives with timers, the racks of high-powered rifles and envenomed daggers. Slusk had always come off as a bit of a cheapskate, but he plainly didn't skimp on the essentials.

_Wipe the drool from your chin and get moving,_ she reprimanded herself. _It's time to get this sleek little beast planetside. _

She shut the door with some reluctance and headed for the cockpit. Halfway there, she was seized with a sudden trembling weakness, like a rush of blood to the head, that brought her to her hands and knees. Flakes of something like dirty snow danced before her eyes and disappeared before they hit the ground.

She thought she saw a man pierced through the heart with a shard of ice. When she reached for him, her hands were wreathed in flames.

"Be still," she whispered, and the sound of her own voice startled her. Gradually, her vision cleared. She stood with great care.

_Why can't I shake this cursed fever?_ Del rubbed her false eye with the heel of her hand and felt its worrisome, pulsing heat. _It's actually getting_ worse. _No wonder I'm seeing things._

But for a moment there had been a feeling of truth to the vision, a sense of connectedness and awareness she had thought forever lost . . .

Del crushed that fragile hope before it could reach full blossom. Laughing bitterly, she reached for the shuttle controls.

* * *

"Twist that any tighter and it's going to blow up in your face," said Bao-Dur.

The Czerka tech looked up from the force cage she was attempting to repair and gave him a vicious glare.

"Will you _shut up_?" Judging by the ugly purple her face was turning, the tech was just about ready to shut down the fields of Bao-Dur's mini-prison and go after him with her hydrospanner. "I don't know how you managed to short this thing out, but I do know that you're the reason I have to stand here all damned night repairing it."

He shrugged, feeling distinctly less than guilty. Then the tech made another graceless prod at the exposed innards of the force cage, and Bao-Dur winced. "I'm warning you, one more half-turn and that conduit will– "

"Shut UP!" A handful of screws arced toward his head and were deflected by the field.

"All right," he said genially, lacing his hands behind his head. "It's your face."

She mumbled something unsavory beneath her breath and went back to abusing the machinery.

Bao-Dur had been imprisoned long enough to know that his captors were big fans of corporal punishment. The torture field wasn't the worst pain he'd ever felt, but it was no afternoon picnic on Alderaan. He bit back any further suggestions and contented himself with watching the tech repeatedly fail to conjure anything more than a handful of sparks from the field generator.

Then the tech gave the generator a healthy smack, as though it were the haunch of a farm animal, and it sputtered reluctantly to life. She stepped back from the humming cascade of energy with a triumphant grin on her flushed (but unfortunately still whole) face.

"Ha!" She wagged one dirty finger at Bao-Dur. "You see that? I fixed it just fine without any of your stupid–"

Every light in the complex flickered and went out. The backup generator kept the detention fields glowing, and it was by their eerie light that he made out the saucer eyes of the tech.

"Not my fault," she shouted, and scurried out of the room.

Bao-Dur didn't know if she was right or wrong about the lights, and he didn't care. The only thing that mattered was that he was now alone, and provided with a nice convenient distraction to boot. He raised his cybernetic arm, clenched his teeth, and slammed it into the field.

Just like before, the force cage shorted out. Bao-Dur moved fast, pausing only to turn off the stasis field around his remote. The droid greeted him with a series of soft beeps.

"I missed you too," he told it. "But we'd better hurry. You know how quickly they caught us last time."

On his previous bid for freedom, he'd made it no more than a dozen steps out of the room before the first merc saw him. The man had been clumsy, slow in pulling his weapon, and Bao-Dur could have dropped him before he ever had the chance to take aim. He'd even started toward the merc, fists raised, ready to snap his neck like a twig, when the strength of his own desire to harm sickened him. And so he hadn't fought back, even when the merc had thumped him in the back of the skull with his blaster and dragged him back to his cell.

This time, Bao-Dur promised himself, he would fight. And if it came down to it, if the price of escape proved to be end of a sentient life, he would force himself to kill again.

The lights turned out to be the least of Czerka's problems. As he crept from the containment room, a series of explosions rocked the compound, obliterating the merc quarters. At this time of night, he would guess that more than a dozen men had just been blown apart in their beds.

_Czerka must have ticked off the wrong person_, he thought, quickly heading for the opposite side of the compound and ignoring the hot rush of satisfaction at the idea of his captors reduced to spare parts.

There were more explosions as he ran, and quieter bursts of blasterfire. At one point a man in Czerka uniform tore down the corridor toward him, running like death itself was on his heels. When he was no more than a few yards away, an enormous blast of energy slammed into the man's back and sent him sprawling.

Bao-Dur changed directions so quickly he bumped one of his horns on his remote, then ducked into the nearest room. Behind him, a second shot echoed, intermingled with the sound of a woman's laughter.

He'd only just had time to duck behind a wall terminal when the door slid open, revealing the dimly-lit form of a woman carrying a rifle nearly as big as she was tall. She lowered the massive weapon, peered into the room, and cleared her throat as though to speak.

Before she had the chance Bao-Dur was behind her, his flesh-and-blood arm wrapped tightly around her throat.

"I think you should put that down," he murmured. He felt her tension, how every muscle in her back was rigid against his chest. He worried he might have to hurt her to make her comply.

Then the rifle clattered to the floor. At just that moment, the lights came back on. The woman broke his hold and spun away but did not reach for her fallen weapon. She stood just out of arm's reach, unmoving, watching him and waiting.

Bao-Dur saw her eyes, how very pale they were. The color of dreams come to life.

"Assaulting a superior officer, Bao-Dur?" General Deleón smiled, a cruel white flash of teeth in a ruined face that had once been heart-breakingly lovely. "I should have you court-martialed."

* * *

A/N part 2: Yep, I'm monkeying around a bit with the timeline of some of the battles in the Mandalorian Wars. Eres III and its burniness is now one of Revan's shoddy early efforts. Sorry for any ulcers that might have induced.

Hugs 'n' kisses, all. :)


	8. The Snow Queen

So here we are again! Many thanks to anyone who's still with me after the dry spell. I hope this chapter was worth the wait. Also, I'm hoping my makeshift linebreaks work, as seem to be all wonky lately... If not, this'll make for one confusing read. ;)

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Bao-Dur had been certain the General had died at Malachor. He'd been there when she fell, burning, long black hair suddenly bright as the tail of a comet. Some nights he dreamed of it and woke thinking he could see her blood on his hands, a little darker than the rest.

For a moment he was convinced he was seeing a ghost–something was missing, some vital _fullness_ to her presence–but the thought was ridiculous. The woman standing before him was changed, but absolutely alive. He could still feel the faint heat where his skin had touched hers.

Shouts echoed in the corridors, distant but growing closer. The General's savage mirth cooled instantly to the sternness he remembered from the battlefield. "Do you still fight barehanded?"

Bao-Dur swallowed a tangled lump of half-formed questions. "Yes, General."

"All right." She kicked up the rifle and set her finger to the trigger. "Stay close."

Something deep within Bao-Dur cried out in warning. He _knew_, as he sometimes _knew_ what someone meant to say before they spoke, or what was wrong with an engine before he even got the hatch open, that if he did not walk away now he would soon take another life. He recalled a motto often whispered in wartime, half admiring and half fearful: _'when General Deleón leads, death follows.'_

The General turned, gray eyes shadowed, and gestured him briskly forward with her long, tapered fingers.

As always, Bao-Dur followed.

---------------------------------------

The General had cleared out most of the compound before Bao-Dur had joined her, and afterward her talent with a blaster removed the need to deliver any fatal blows himself. Once at the Czerka mainframe she had explained what she was looking for but not why, then retreated to the far corner of the room with a cigarra. It took him almost an hour to find where her missing freighter had ended up, ample time to find a way to breach the gulf of years that stretched between them if either one were willing to make the first gesture.

Finally he was done, and the General stood at top of the shuttle ramp. She paused in the hatchway and looked back at him. Her fingers absently stroked the nasty bruise beneath her jaw. Her lips parted, began to shape a question, and faltered.

She was afraid. The realization made him bold.

"I'm coming with you," he said.

Bao-Dur had a fraction of a second to see the relief his words inspired before it was deftly hidden.

"Don't," she said. "You have no idea what kind of trouble you're courting." She reached for the shuttle hatch controls. Bao-Dur bounded up the ramp in three steps and caught hold of her arm.

"Then tell me," he said.

---------------------------------------

They traded bits and pieces of the last ten years as the shuttle arced smoothly over the blurry green and brown patchwork of Telos. There were gaps in her narrative wide enough to pilot a warship through, but Bao-Dur did not begrudge the General her secrets. Her missing lightsaber and unhealed bruises went unexplained, but what she did say painted a clear enough picture of her most pressing troubles.

At her first mention of the Sith, an old, familiar anger began its slow-burn in the pit of Bao-Dur's stomach. "Revan."

"No, not Revan." The musculature of the General's face and neck tightened, creating ugly shadows where none had been before, and in that moment Bao-Dur no longer recognized her. "I wish it had been him."

The Sith Lord's bruising presence filled the small shuttle cockpit. Bao-Dur's anger seemed to feed off of the General's, rising to a painfully pleasant crescendo. It felt so _right_– Bao-Dur and his General, once again united in hatred against a common enemy . . .

But Revan's betrayal was old news. Old and better left buried. He took a deep breath and held it, letting the emotion wash over and through him with the practice of long years.

When he was able to speak again, his voice was barely above a whisper.

"It's . . . good to see you again, General, whatever the circumstances."

She did not reply, but from the corner of his eye Bao-Dur thought he saw her expression soften.

The shuttle rocked violently, throwing him back against his seat. The General shouted something, but her words were lost in the grating roar of a second impact. His head took a savage blow from the control panel.

The last thing he saw before blacking out was the snowy ground, surging upward to meet them.

---------------------------------------

Del gazed at a sky shot through with ash, falling. Reaching out to touch it, her fingers bumped into hard plastic. _I crashed_, she thought, and was dazedly amazed to find herself still whole. Though half of the shuttle was torn away on impact, it had managed to land in such a way that her side of the cockpit remained fully intact. She stared dumbly at the white flakes swirling against the cracked shuttle windscreen. _No, not ash . . . How many years has it been since I last saw snow? _

A spike of fear cut through her foggy musings. Bao-Dur's seat was empty. Other than a bright smear of blood on the control panel, there was no sign of the zabrak. Even his remote was missing.

Her first urge was to shout for him, but caution stilled her tongue. After all, the shuttle hadn't simply crashed. Someone had shot them down–most likely the same someone who had nicked her ship. Lately she had enemies like wookiees have fleas: in the least convenient of places and with a taste for blood.

Almost as that thought finished, the wind carried the distant sound of voices.

"Observation: the target our master wishes us to locate is neither a zabrak nor in possession of male reproductive organs."

"Obvious conclusion: this horned organic meatbag is not the one we're looking for."

The voices were modulated and identical. Either Del was dealing with one crazy droid merrily conversing with itself, or several droids of the same bloodthirsty model. Neither prospect filled her heart with joy, but at least they were preoccupied for the moment. She turned on her strength enhancers and carefully scooted backward through the wreckage until the armory was in reach.

"Calculating observation: then there is nothing to prevent us from fulfilling our intended function."

"Wistful addendum: if only the organic were conscious to enjoy the spectacle of his messy termination."

Del peered around the edge of the shuttle and caught sight of her latest enemies. There were two of them: gunmetal gray droids that surveyed their surroundings with quick, bird-like twitches of their aerodynamic heads. Bao-Dur's prone form was partially visible behind them, disturbingly still. His remote bobbed between him and the droids, beeping indignantly.

"Amused observation: this little waste of circuitry is attempting to threaten us. Shall I reduce him to spare parts along with his master?"

One ion grenade, two droids. They were grouped together nicely. If she threw the grenade now both of them would take a hit–as would Bao-Dur and his remote.

_No time to worry about it_.

Del threw the grenade. One of the droids took a direct hit to the neck joints and toppled sideways into the snow with a static burst of surprise. The other swayed slightly at the impact but remained upright.

She hardly had time to marvel at the alarming speed of which the droid was capable before it was on top of her. It raised its heavy blaster and Del dodged, only to be hit full-on in the chest with a handful of stun charges.

Electricity slammed through her body. She fell backward as every muscle in her body went rigid and heard a sharp pop behind her left eye as the delicate circuitry there overloaded.

The droid leaned close to retrieve her before she'd even stopped twitching, confident that her pesky consciousness had been taken care of, but the dose contained within the charges had not been intended for someone of Del's constitution. Singed, half-blind, and pissed off well past the point of reason, she landed a kick against the droid's chestplate that sent it flying back into the snow. She hurled herself after it, grabbed hold of its weapon arm, and began beating its head in with its own heavy blaster. It fought back, hard, but Del hardly felt the blows that landed. At last she succeeded in maneuvering the muzzle of the blaster against the droid's photoreceptor and pulled the trigger.

Del staggered to her feet, only to find that the other droid had not stayed down. It stood calmly, several yards away, blaster level with her face.

"Appreciative statement: rarely have I witnessed an organic meatbag engage in such unmitigated brutality. It's almost a shame that you must be incapacitated." The blaster lowered to point at one of her knees. Del braced herself for what was sure to be a painful impact.

A bright blue burst of electricity engulfed the droid from behind. Del took her chance and shot it, again and again until she was sure it would stay down.

When the last echo of gunfire had faded, she looked past the fallen droid in search of her unexpected savior and saw Bao-Dur's remote–or at least its sad, mangled remains. It cooed disjointedly at her.

"You and me both," she muttered. Now that her adrenaline was subsiding, her myriad dings and dents were loudly announcing their presence. Worse was her brand new, priceless eye, now a very expensive piece of junk taking up space in her skull.

Bao-Dur looked bad, so bad she almost hated to feel for a pulse and confirm her worst suspicions. His heart was still beating, though, and some unnamed tightness inside her chest unknotted because of it. Still, the gash on his head was hard to look at without wincing, and he was far from conscious. He needed more help than she could give him.

Del indulged in a moment of pure bitterness, remembering days when healing required nothing more than a little concentration.

Inside the shuttle were three fire-retardant blankets, thin and scratchy but slightly better than nothing. One became a makeshift travois on which to drag the unconscious zabrak and, after a twinge of guilty conscience, his remote. The next she tucked around Bao-Dur, the last across her own shoulders.

Thus equipped, Del set off into the snow in search of whatever there was to find.

---------------------------------------

"Put down your weapons," said the pale girl.

Del tried to take aim, but there seemed to be three or more of the same girl, all closing in on her. She wasn't sure exactly how she'd stumbled across the duct or gotten herself and Bao-Dur inside. She'd trudged through the snow for several eternities laid end-to-end as the biting cold had fanned her fever to impossible heights. She could no longer tell if she were burning or freezing, knew only that it was warm here and she wanted very badly to sleep . . .

But the girl. _Girls._

"Put down your weapons or we will take them from you," they said.

"Go fuck yourselves," she managed, and fainted.

---------------------------------------

They'd shaved her head.

"Too full of knots," they said. "We'd break the comb if we tried."

So now Katya wandered the enclave with brisk, fierce strides of her chubby little legs, scratching at her itchy, stubbly head and wishing the entire planet would explode.

She'd _liked_ her hair. It was long, black, and straight just like her mother's had been, before she'd died and couldn't brush anyone's hair anymore. Katya's father had even told her it was pretty once, when he felt bad for blackening both of her eyes in one day.

Stupid enclave. Stupid Jedi.

Katya heard the sounds of someone coming–looking for her?–and ducked into the first doorway she found.

She was good at being quiet. Even so, the woman at the desk must have noticed her, because her back went straight and her hands stopped moving. Katya waited, but the woman didn't turn around, just kept on sitting perfectly still.

Her hair was pure white, like an old woman's, but her neck was smooth and pink. Katya edged to one side to see her face.

She was pretty, so fair-skinned and thin and ice-sculpture perfect that fat, befreckled little Katya could not help but be immediately smitten. She crept forward, one sliding step at a time, until she could see that the woman was looking at a slab of metal inscribed all over with symbols and taking notes on a datapad.

"What's your name?" The woman asked the question without looking at her, like she was talking to the datapad or the tablet.

"Katya," she whispered.

"Can you read, Katya?"

Her embarrassed silence was answer enough. The woman turned and gazed directly at her with eyes of glacier blue.

"Would you like to me to teach you how?"

Katya nodded, disbelieving. Then, remembering her predicament with a flush of shame, "They cut my hair."

"It will grow back." The woman's smile warmed her to the core. "There is very little that the passage of time cannot repair."

---------------------------------------

For the first time in weeks, Del felt . . . good.

She staved off the questions of _where_ and _how_ for as long as she could manage, concentrating instead on the warm, comfortable bed upon which she was lying, the pleasant slickness of kolto salve taking the sting from her wounds, the relief that her fever was once again contained to a dull ache behind one eye.

"You're awake."

A woman's voice, one that Del dearly missed hearing. She opened her eyes to a vision that was half fuzzy-edged blackness, half the searing white-on-white of robes, skin, and hair. The sight dazzled her.

"Atris," she whispered.

The white glow shifted, resolved into a woman.

"Once again you manage to survive against all odds," Atris said. "And once again you drag your pitiful remains to my doorstep. What is it you think you'll find here, Exile?"

Del recognized a challenge when she heard one. She slid her legs over the edge of the bed, intending to stand, only to find that the majority of her clothes had been taken from her as she slept. She clutched the blanket to her chest and glared with what dignity she could muster.

"I hoped to find my stolen ship."

"_Your_ ship?" Atris smiled coolly. "Then you admit that you were behind the massacre aboard the Harbinger, where the Ebon Hawk was last sighted."

_So that is where we stand_, Del thought as something cold and hard nestled deep within her belly. "I had no reason to harm them."

"And what of all the Jedi you've murdered in the years of your exile? How did they provoke you?"

Del was startled to incredulous laughter. "All this snow has left you feebleminded, Atris. My quarrel is with the Council, not its followers–and certainly not with the men and women aboard the Harbinger."

"Someone killed them."

"Yes. The same someone that tried to kill me, and will try to kill you if he knows you're alive."

Atris did not reply immediately. Del could imagine her wavering between curiosity and the urge to heap more accusations upon Del's head. At last she nodded, decided.

"It seems that even you are capable of truth when it suits you." Atris stepped toward her, hand at her belt. "Tell me everything you know or I will find a way to pry it from you."

Again Del recited the events which had occurred since her strange encounter aboard the dead ship. With each telling she found it grew more distant, more dreamlike.

She far preferred it that way.

Atris' frown deepened with every word. At last she interrupted, fairly dripping with scorn.

"Am I to believe that a Sith Lord could not discern the difference between _you_ and a true Jedi?"

"I've told you everything." Del's voice was low and tight. "Give me back my ship and my clothes and let me go."

"Our meeting ends when I say it does," Atris snapped. "You are not in control here, Exile."

"It's _Katya_, Atris. Do you think I'd really believe you've forgotten my name?" Del stood, began closing the distance between them. "Well, I can remember it all-- the day we met; all those long afternoons in the dusty archives; the night I made the decision to follow Revan to war, when you and I–"

"No further, Exile, I'm warning you."

"Let me go." Del's voice turned soft despite her anger. She lifted her hand, meaning to place it on Atris' shoulder as she had a thousand times before. "The longer I'm here–"

"Stay back!"

A beam of light sliced the air between them, painting Atris' face a sickly green.

Del saw the hilt of the 'saber. Her pulse hissed in her ears. "I dare you."

The moment the pale Jedi's hands shifted to strike, Del grabbed for her.

Even now, with all the power of the Force at her command, Atris was little match for the younger woman. She was wrestled to the bed, pinned between Del's arms and her body. The lightsaber fell from her hand as her hair tumbled loose from its pins, shrouding them both.

Atris strained against her, digging red furrows in Del's skin with her nails where she could reach it, arching her white neck. Del only tightened her grip.

"So long as he believes I am the last living Jedi, you will be safe," she said, lips pressed to Atris' ear. "Stay here. Don't attempt to fight him."

She had just pushed Atris away when one of the pale girls rushed into the room.

"Is there a problem, mistress? We heard noises . . ."

Atris' back was hunched, her hands rigid at her sides. "The Exile is leaving now," she said.

Del wrapped the blanket around herself and allowed the girl to herd her from the room. Never once did Atris turn.

---------------------------------------

"Here are your clothes." The girl handed her the stack and did not look away.

Del glared at her. "Can't I have a second away from prying eyes?"

"No." The girl did not seem insulted. "Mistress Atris told us that you are dangerous and not to be trusted under any circumstances. Besides, I saw it all when I treated your wounds."

Grudgingly, Del dressed herself beneath the girl's passive gaze. Her wrist guard with its poisoned needles was conspicuously missing, along with her blaster and anything else that could be used as a weapon. When she asked, she was told that it was on the Ebon Hawk along with her zabrak companion.

The blood drained from Del's face. She sped to the ship, boots still dangling from one hand, and hurtled up the ramp.

Bao-Dur was in one of the dormitories, sitting on a cot. His head was bandaged, and though there were circles under his eyes he smiled at her.

"All patched up, General. Looks like you got the same treatment."

She nodded once. "What about your remote?"

The little droid lay next to its master, still in pieces. Bao-Dur touched its curving surface fondly. "It's nothing I can't fix," he said. The droid let loose a torrent of sharp beeps and Bao-Dur chuckled. "He's still pretty mad at you, though."

"Yes, well, he'll have to get in line." Del dropped her boots and slid her feet into them. When she looked up Bao-Dur's smile had faded.

"Listen, General, I'm sorry about what happened out there. You shouldn't have had to face those droids by yourself."

"I could certainly have used a hand."

Bao-Dur grimaced at the sharpness of her tone. "Can I make it up to you, General?"

"First, you can help me get as far away from here as possible." Del touched tentative fingertips to the lid of her right eye, frowning. "Then you can tell me what you know about optical cybernetics."

"Yes, General." Bao-Dur got to his feet and followed her to the cockpit. They both watched the swirling snow fade to a smooth white blank.

"I've had more than enough snow for one lifetime," Bao-Dur muttered.

Del remembered ice-blue eyes, soft pale hair tangled in her fingers, and nodded.

---------------------------------------

Brief disclaimer: I 3 robots. It would appear that Del does not share my opinion.

Del: Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!

HK-50: Disheartened emoticon: (


	9. The Open Wound

Okay, several months and one stolen laptop later, we pick up where we left off. You guys still out there:) Heaps of thanks to Albur for whipping this thing into shape with her awesome beta skills!

* * *

Del paced the narrow walkways of the Ebon Hawk, mercilessly bruising her lower lip with her teeth. It was of paramount importance that she start running again, and soon. Her dealings with Slusk and the Czerka station had been significantly less than subtle, and one of her pursuers was bound to follow the trail of destruction she'd so kindly laid out for them.

_Yes, _she thought,_ I needed to be on my way. . . but to where? The Exchange has hands and eyes from one end of the galaxy to the other, and the Sith…_

Del tasted blood and swore. She reached for a cigarra, remembered she'd smoked the last one hours ago, and hurled the empty package at a nearby trash receptacle.

It beeped at her.

She squinted at it, acutely conscious of her missing eye—with her permission, Bao-Dur had disconnected the tiny ball of machinery and removed it completely. At last she recognized the astromech droid and scowled. "What the hell do you want?"

It beeped again, somewhat indignantly. Del sighed and gestured for it to follow her.

Bao-Dur stood over a well-lit workbench, a nearly invisible probe in one hand and her disembodied eye in the other. Her stomach turned at the sight, and she quickly looked away.

"Yes, General?" He frowned, then handed her a clean rag. "Looks like you bit yourself."

"Oh…Thanks," Del mumbled. She swallowed, abruptly uneasy and unsure why. "Is there any chance of saving the eye?"

"I think so. I might even be able to improve on its design." His smile, though warm, died swiftly. "General… could I ask you something?"

She nodded, dabbing at her lip with the rag.

"Why all the implants? The eye I can understand, but those enhancers…" The line between his brows deepened. "Did anyone warn you how dangerous they are?"

It was not a question she expected. "I was apprised of the risks before the surgery," she said warily. "They aren't fatal."

"But those aren't the only ones, are they?" His voice was soft. She found, to her surprise, that she did not want to lie to him.

"No."

"Those implants are living off of you like parasites, General. They could shave whole years off of your life." He regarded her soberly. "Are they really worth it?"

Del opened her mouth but found no words to explain the deathly emptiness that had seized her in the wake of Malachor, the repulsive frailty of her own Force-deaf body. Bao-Dur watched her struggle with a strange look in his eyes. At length, Del recognized it what it meant.

He felt sorry for her.

Del wadded up the blood-spotted rag and tossed it onto the workbench. "I didn't come back here for a lecture," she growled.

"All right," the Zabrak said mildly. "Why are you here, General?"

With impeccable timing, the astromech droid rolled forward and trilled something to Bao-Dur. He nodded. It beeped again, then looked at her expectantly.

"Looks like someone rooted around in his archives after the ship was stolen," Bao-Dur explained. "They didn't realize he was returning the favor."

"Atris' archives? Really…" The beautiful face of the white-haired woman appeared in her mind and Del pressed her sore lips together, savoring the sting. She nodded to the droid. "Let's have a look at what you've found."

* * *

_An echo. A wound. She walked Revan's path, but she was not strong enough._

Again and again the words from the holovid of the trial played through Del's mind, and each time their thorns found new places to catch and draw blood.

She only vaguely remembered bringing the freighter from its mindless low orbit back to Citadel and sending Bao-Dur in search of supplies. She recalled his concerned questions, but not how she'd answered them. Had she shouted at him?

_She will never know why we cast her out._

She had names and last known locations. She had years of experience in Slusk's service unearthing people who did not wish to be found, even with a whole planet to hide them. Del would know soon enough—one way or another.

The redblack hollow of her eye socket throbbed, burning hot to the touch. She crushed a handful of pills to bitter dust on her tongue.

_Not strong enough…_

The anger still pulsed at her core, but its sharpest edges were blunted. Her heart rate gradually slowed.

Del leaned back and let herself sink into the medicinal fog.

* * *

The wound above Sion's heart was bleeding.

He watched the dark fluid seep from it and run down the cracked skin of his chest with distant curiosity. The blood that coursed slowly through his veins was viscous and cold—even fresh wounds rarely bled.

He thought of the Exile, struggling to free herself from his grasp. Perhaps her desperate clawing had reopened the wound.

Even lightyears away he could feel her, a faint pulsing heat at the very edge of perception. He wondered how she would spend the handful of days she had left. Images flashed through his mind, one after the other:

_The Exile kneeling, head bowed, at Kreia's feet… _

_Skin flushed, back arched, in the arms of her dark-haired companion…_

_Lying in the dark, gray eyes wide, remembering the feeling of his hand at her throat…_

"Soon," Sion promised. He sank his fingers into the raw wound and twisted them, savoring the sweet rush of agony, the heavy spatter of blood on the stone floor.

* * *

Lying full length alongside Malak with her cheek against the warm, sweat-slicked plane of his chest, Katya's curled toes barely reached past his knees. She felt small against him, delicate, even with Mandalorian blood caught beneath her fingernails and the screams of dying men fresh in her ears. The urge to simply close her eyes and drowse in Malak's arms was strong, but she knew better than to keep Revan waiting.

She began to get up, but Malak's arm tightened around her shoulders and pulled her back. He tugged the blanket away from her chest and ran his fingers down her skin with lazy possessiveness until they closed on the orchid pendant he had given her.

"Leaving already?"

His tone was not terribly warm, and she did not smile. Lately their lovemaking had acquired a desperate edge; their conversations, a sepulchral coldness. She waited silently until he loosened his hold, then rolled out of his reach.

Malak watched her dress, frowning. "You've made up your mind about Revan's proposal."

"I have." She kept her tone carefully neutral. Some glimmer of her intentions must have shown through, however, for Malak sat up suddenly and took her hands, eyes aglow with an emotion she could not place.

"There are two kinds of soldiers in this war, Katya: those whose loyalty is absolute, and those who are expendable." He squeezed her hands with a grip that was just short of painful. "Choose carefully."

Katya pulled free, startled. "We're all on the same side," she insisted, and tried to ignore the chorus of doubts that whispered back.

He said nothing at all in reply. The light in his eyes darkened. She quickly finished dressing and escaped the room.

Malak's telling silence stayed with her as she threaded her way through the corridors, finding her way to Revan more by instinct than conscious direction. She did not meet the eyes of the soldiers she passed.

A man was leaving Revan's quarters as she arrived. He was older than Katya, dark-eyed, black hair shot through with gray at the temples. She recognized him at once and reflexively dropped her gaze to the place where, months ago, she'd pulled a fist-sized piece of shrapnel from his chest.

There was nothing to see, of course. The kolto would have erased all traces of the injury from his skin by now. Katya realized she was blatantly staring and felt her face grow hot. She had just started to mumble an apology when the man unzipped the top of his uniform and pulled aside the fabric above his heart, revealing the bandage there.

"It never healed," he said, pressing two fingers against the bandage. Fresh pinpricks of blood bloomed beneath them.

She winced and reached toward it. "Let me—"

He gently deflected her hand, shaking his head. "I want to keep the scar."

Beneath her own uniform, thin white scars from a hundred skirmishes spelled out their stories against her skin. "I… understand."

He met her eyes steadily. "I suspected you would," he said, and stepped aside to let her pass.

When she glanced back, just as the door slipped shut behind her, he was still watching her.

"Katya," Revan called as she entered. "Sit. Have something to eat."

He sat inside at a small table piled with food, using a thin spoon to dredge marrow from a cracked white bone. In the warm light his dark skin shone as if it had been polished. Eating was the last thing on her mind, but she took a piece of fruit and managed a few miniscule bites.

Revan stood and poured her a glass of amber liquor. "So, you're beginning to doubt me," he said, handing it to her. A bit of fruit caught in Katya's throat, and she had to fight to swallow it without coughing. He hushed her protests with an elegant flourish of the decanter. "Don't deny it, Katya. After what you went through at Dxun, it's only natural that you would question my leadership."

Katya flinched. Most of the soldiers under her command had never left Onderon's jungle moon. "It had to be done," she said stiffly.

"That's what I told you, yes." He leaned forward, long braids falling across his shoulders. "Do you believe it?"

Katya shut her eyes and took a heavy swallow from her glass. "You win battles, Revan. I can't dispute that. But the lives of the soldiers you send to die by the thousands… do they mean anything to you?"

"Look at me," Revan said. She opened her eyes obediently. "War is a game of numbers, not individuals. The Mandalorians know this. The Republic learned it the hard way, defeat by defeat." He walked behind her and placed his hands on her tense shoulders.

"The moment we lose sight of the larger picture, the galaxy is lost," he said. "I know that this is difficult for you to understand, Katya. You've always been too softhearted."

She bowed her head, glad that he could not see the tears that stung her eyes. "Then you know I can't keep doing this."

Revan squeezed her shoulders. His voice was gentle. "You won't have to. Malachor V will be the end of all of it, I promise you."

"Revan…" She could not continue.

"You are the only one I can rely on to do this, Katya. I know you're strong enough." He lifted her chin with soft fingers, smoothed a strand of her hair behind her ear. "Do you trust me?"

Katya could only stare into his eyes—beautiful, green-gold animal eyes.

"Of course, Revan."

* * *

Del stirred. Dazed, she thought she caught Revan's sharp, peppery scent in the air. It made her want to throw up.

"Your dreams trouble you, Exile."

Del lifted her head to find Kreia standing above her placidly, as though she had been there for some time. She climbed heavily to her feet. "You'd better have a damned good reason for being here."

"I hoped anger might persuade you to listen where fear did not."

Del hesitated. The Council might not have known the nature of her wound, but they had hinted it might be healed…And if she were going to challenge Jedi Masters, no number of implants or augments would guarantee success. "I'm listening."

"Yet you do not truly _hear_. The throb of life and death all around you, the heartbeat of the galaxy—you are deaf to it." She smiled cruelly. "Does my speaking the truth anger you, Exile? Good. There is strength and clarity in anger." The smile faded. Kreia tilted her head, obscuring her face in shadow. "But you can no longer allow such emotions to rule you utterly. There are many painful truths you must confront if you are to feel the Force again."

"You're serious." Del laughed once, too loud in the quiet ship. "You actually think you can help me."

"Perhaps," Kreia said. "But you must be prepared to heed my teachings, and seek out your own. I can do nothing for one who holds no desire to change."

"Teachings?" She chuckled derisively once more. "I've learned that nothing in this galaxy comes without a price. What's yours?"

"Your journey is important to me, Exile. In time, you may understand why. Until then, I ask only that you accept my counsel… and the assistance of any others who may prove useful."

The old woman was so calm, so certain. "Fine," Del said. "You can come along, for now." Then something clicked, and she narrowed her eyes at Kreia suspiciously. "Exactly which _others_ are you talking about?"

* * *

Atton lounged near the loading ramp of the _Ebon Hawk_, twirling his blaster on one finger. It was cold in the hangar, and he was bored out of his mind, but the old witch had told him to wait.

So he waited.

He aimed the blaster at the Hawk, pretending he had a bead on Kreia's ugly face. How surprised would she be the millisecond before the shot found its mark?

It was due to this feeble act of rebellion that Atton missed Bao-Dur walking in with an armful of boxes. The Zabrak eased his burden to the floor, then quietly crept up behind him.

He wasn't quiet enough. Atton whirled on him the moment he got close. Before he could take a shot the Zabrak knocked the pistol out of his hand and crushed him to the floor. Atton worked a hand free and threw a punch, only to nearly break a finger on one of the Zabrak's horns.

He flung himself hard to one side, then the other. The alien was strong, but he couldn't keep a grip on the man's wiry frame. Atton rolled to his feet the moment he broke free and kicked the Zabrak twice in the gut.

The gun had landed nearby. Atton scooped it from the ground, smirking at the groaning alien, and raised it to fire.

At precisely that moment, the barrel of a ridiculously outsized rifle pressed against the back of his head.

"_Don't._" Del's harsh whisper.

Atton blinked. "You're pointing the gun at _me_?" His disbelief only mounted when Del stepped around him and, still training the rifle on Atton, offered the Zabrak her hand.

"Thanks, General." The Zabrak winced and glanced over at Atton, who glared back. "You two know each other?"

"We've met," she replied in a low voice. At last, the muzzle of the rifle dropped to the floor. "Bao-Dur, this is Atton. Atton, Bao-Dur."

"Let me apologize, Atton." The Zabrak offered him a hand—the one that was actually connected to his body. "I saw you with that gun in your hand and jumped to conclusions."

Atton forced a smile and shook the outstretched hand. "Hey, no harm done. I just don't react well to being snuck up on."

The Zabrak smiled back. "I'll remember that."

_You'd better_, Atton thought.

When he was gone Del walked up to Atton, massaging one eye with the heel of her hand. "I hear you've decided to come with me."

"That's right," he said. "You still owe me one, after all."

"So I do." She eyed him curiously. He stared boldly back, unsure of what he was going to say if she told him to take a hike. Something she saw evidently satisfied her, however, and he was spared the need for awkward explanations.

Not long after, the four of them stood in the center of the Ebon Hawk, stealing uncomfortable glances at one another.

"There are rules I expect you to follow if you're traveling with me, both on and off this ship," Del told them. Shoulders back, hands clasped, the scarred woman looked every bit an authoritarian general. "Rule one: do exactly as I say, when I say it. If you object to this, no one is forcing you to come along."

Atton scowled at Kreia, who refused to acknowledge him.

"Rule two: no killing fellow crew members without my express permission."

At this point, Del gave Atton a significant look. All at once, he realized that her eye—the one she couldn't seem to stop touching and rubbing—was nothing more than an empty socket. He could not prevent the grimace that followed, anymore than he could resist the question he blurted out. "Where the hell is your other eye?"

"Rule three: no stupid questions." Del scowled at each of them in turn and muttered darkly under her breath. "All right," she said. "Let's get this cursed ship into the air."


	10. The Smuggler's Moon

_A combination of lingering guilt and a well timed message from Sarela Jade have persuaded me to blow the dust off of this poor, neglected fic. Has it really been 4 years? It is rather appropriate, though, I think; a Sion-centric story rising from the dead._

_The plan is to put my diligence to the test and try to get this fic wrapped up in a nice, timely fashion. Wish me luck, all 2 or 3 people who might still be around to read this! ;)_

_Also, I've noticed that this site has decided to eat random bits of sentences from the earlier chapters, leaving some of them riddled with gibberish. I plan to fix that as well, so I apologize if there is suddenly a flood of updates to this long-dead story. Okey dokey, let's get on with it!_

* * *

In the rational part of her mind, Del understood that four people were the barest bones of a skeleton crew. But the rational part of Del's mind was not nearly as persuasive the weight of their names in her mind, their faces. The first threads of connective tissue were already twining together in the empty spaces between them, tying their fates to hers. She was very conscious of the constant rasp of her own breathing—was it always this loud? Could they hear it through the walls?

She crept restlessly through the ship, unable to sit still, hesitating at each corner, certain that rounding it would mean colliding with one of the others. A door she took at random left her in the engine room, the hyperdrive humming like a hornet's nest. She knelt and pressed her face to its side, letting the sound fill her head until she could think again.

Telos was behind them. She'd tasked Atton with getting them as far away from the scarred planet as possible, but had not yet been able to decide where they should travel first. There were compelling arguments to avoid each of the places the Council members had fled to.

"General?" Bao Dur's voice seemed to pour from nothing. Del jumped, then felt like an idiot—had she really been alone long enough to forget that most ships had intercoms?

"There's something I think you should see," the Zabrak went on.

Del found the small red button near the doorway and punched it. "I'm on my way."

When she reached Bao Dur, he was holding a fine pair of tweezers, which in turn pinched a wire as thin as a hair with a tiny bulb on one end.

"Found this hidden in the circuitry in your eye," he said.

She squinted at the wire and frowned. "I doubt I'd know what that was even if I wasn't half-blind."

"Don't feel bad, General. I didn't recognize it at first either." He carefully set the wire down and turned to face her. "It's a tracking device. Sophisticated little thing, too. I'd bet it's how those droids found you on Telos."

"And the Devaronian at the cantina, no doubt. It never even occurred to me to wonder how he'd tracked me down so easily." She shook her head. What a careless fool she'd become. "Is it still transmitting?"

"Not anymore. It shorted itself out right after I traced the tracking signal back to its source." Bao Dur smiled at her look of surprise. "Someone on Nar Shaddaa was very interested in keeping an eye on you, General. Uh, no pun intended." He turned a faint shade of pink and hurried on. "Unfortunately, I couldn't narrow it down any further before the circuits fried."

"Nar Shaddaa..." Del nodded. "That makes sense. The stench of that moon draws Exchange thugs like flies."

"Exchange? Where exactly did you get this implant, General?"

Del met the questions in Bao Dur's eyes with hard silence. Eventually he looked away, though the crease between his brows remained. She felt the sudden urge to say something that would smooth it away and make him smile at her again. Instead she thumbed the intercom button.

"Atton, set a course to Nar Shaddaa."

* * *

Del left Bao-Dur and his questions behind and resumed roaming the ship. On her third pass through the long central corridor, Kreia poured out of the shadows behind her.

"You are pacing, Exile," the old woman said. "Is it the walls of this ship that cage you?"

Del planted her feet and did her best to silently stare the older woman down as she had Bao Dur, but Kreia only smiled.

"No. I sense the bars you throw yourself against are of a more personal nature. Will you ever tire of submitting yourself to the rule of fear, I wonder?"

Del leaned back against the protection of the corridor wall, rubbing her temples. "More cryptic observations. Can't you speak like a normal person?"

"Do you truly desire that I speak plainly, when a mere sliver of truth brings you such discomfort?"

"I'm not uncomfortable," Del forced through clenched teeth. "I'm in pain. You may recall that it was less than a day ago my eye exploded in my skull. Your rambling isn't helping."

"I have not forgotten." Her weathered lips curled back from her teeth. "Understand that your very reliance upon such..._devices..._blinds you to the Force, Exile."

"Oh, clever. Another vision pun. Did you and Bao-Dur write them together?"

Kreia threw back her hood so the light fell across her narrowed, cloud-white eyes. "A splint will help a broken limb to heal, yet placing the same splint on a healthy limb will cause it to atrophy. You have grown weak and indolent, Exile. Stand by your strength alone, or surrender it completely and fall."

She strode briskly past, leaving Del to gape at her retreating back.

* * *

At the far end of the cargo hold, about halfway up the wall, was a scratch in the metal surface, the remnant of some long ago blaster fire. Del spun three times and shuffled slowly through the dark to where she thought the scratch would be, one hand stretched out before her. She felt ridiculous, but Kreia's words had worked their way under her skin. And if the old woman could cut down a sith lord while blinded by cataracts as thick as dinner plates, surely Del could find her way across an empty cargo hold without peeking.

Her fingertips hit cold metal. She pushed up the strip of bedsheet she'd wound across her eyes and swore. Her target was easily two yards to her left.

"Nice blindfold," Atton said from the doorway. His low, relaxed slouch against the frame told her he'd been there for a while. "Show me the matching pair of handcuffs and I might just fall in love."

The mere sight of his self-satisfied half smile sent a blade of irritation slicing down her spine. "Don't you have a ship to fly?"

He lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. "Droid's got it under control."

"Oh? Maybe it would appreciate your company. I don't."

Atton dropped the smirk and he stood up, filling the doorway. "Look, I came here to help you train. If I'm wasting my time, I can find another wall to beat my head against."

Del straightened her shoulders. "What makes you think I need help?"

"You want to take on full-blown Jedi. Masters, even." He snorted. "And you're screwing around playing pin the tail on the cannok."

"You... have a point." She made an effort to retract the claws in her tone. It wouldn't do to keep getting so perturbed every time someone spoke to her, if only for the sake of her blood pressure. "I assume you have a better suggestion?"

Atton crossed halfway to her, licking his lips thoughtfully. Then he pushed back his jacket and started to unbuckle his belt.

"Really, Atton?" She watched the movement of his hands and felt her pulse quicken from more than anger. "Knowing how to work a belt may be enough to seduce a Zeltron, but I'll have to decline."

He clucked his tongue in disapproval. "Sex on the brain." He tugged the belt free and let it twist in the air beside him. "Must be all those years of Jedi repression tying your hormones into knots."

Atton flicked his wrist before he even finished speaking. Del dodged to the side and the belt snapped beside her ear like a whip.

"Yeah, real impressive," he said, his eyes locked on hers. "Let's see you do that with the blindfold on."

It was a dare, plainly spoken. And while Del had never been much for quiet meditation, physical training had once been her primary method of connecting with the Force.

"This is a mistake," she said, pushing the blindfold back into place. The moment her vision went dark she heard him moving, circling her. She readied her stance, bending slightly at the knees, bringing up her hands. "I have a feeling I'm going to regret-"

She nearly missed it, the whistle of leather slicing through the air. Throwing back her head meant the tip of the belt stung the tip of her chin instead of striking her across the mouth. The welt swelled at once to meet her questing fingertips.

"You're starting out with shots to the _face_?"

Atton's voice came from behind her."You want to be coddled, go talk to your Zabrak."

Del caught the caught the whisper of his jacket across his shirt as he took another swing and stepped out of the belt's path just in time. She evaded the next two strikes as well, weaving by instinct, beginning to feel the rhythm of his attacks. She was just starting the believe they might be accomplishing something when he made it past her guard and belted a line of fire right across her ass.

Her vision boiled from black to red. She kicked backward wildly and was rewarded by a _whoof_ of pain and surprise as her boot caught Atton in the gut. She kicked again, but overbalanced when her foot found nothing but empty air. His heel slammed into the back of her knee and she crumpled. Atton followed her to the floor, pinning her with his knee in the small of her back. She bucked and twisted, but his weight held her fast. Without her strength enhancersengaged , she could not resist when he forced her arms to her sides.

"Enough," she snarled with her cheek pressed to the floor. "I concede."

Atton's only reply was the uneven rasp of his breathing. She caught the scent of him in the air and was at once acutely aware of the press of his weight against her back.

"Didn't you hear me, Atton? I give up."

"Stop talking." His voice was soft, deadly soft in a way that she knew should worry her. His grip on her arms slackened. She reached to untie the blindfold, but he caught her hand and pressed it firmly back against her side. His knee slid to the floor beside her hip. She could likely break his hold now if she tried. If she _wanted_ to try.

Dry lips grazed the back of Del's neck. Her eyelids fluttered against the darkness of the blindfold. His hands were sliding beneath her, working at the catches at the front of her trousers. She moved to help him; again he pushed her hands back to the floor. Finally he simply ripped them open with such force that she heard one of the metal fasteners hit the far wall.

_I will regret this_, came the final thought before she gave in completely to the feeling of warm hands on her skin, of teeth at her neck.

* * *

The taut, predatory focus in Atton's eyes slowly dulled as he watched her dress. It was blankness, not gentleness, that replaced it, and Del thought again that he was more dangerous than she gave him credit for. He touched the side of her throat, catching a drop of blood, and looked at his red-stained fingers with his brows drawn, as though he didn't realize his own teeth had broken the skin there.

She hesitated, wanting to leave but not liking the thought of him at her back, until all at once life flooded back into his expression. He smirked at her, his eyes glittering, and smoothed back his sweat-damp hair. The change was so complete, so convincing that she began to doubt what she had seen a only moment before.

"Who _are_ you?" she asked.

He laughed. "Not the first time I've heard that one before the sheets are even dry." He held out his hand as though expecting her to shake it. "Name's Atton Rand. You might remember me from two minutes ago when I was drilling you through the floor."

Her lip drew back from her teeth. "I already regret it."

"Not the first time I've heard that one, either." Still smirking, he leaned in to kiss her. The thought of it made her skin crawl. She shoved him roughly aside and fled the stifling cargo hold, the sound of his laughter chasing her down the corridor.

In the sobering flat light of the fresher, she scrubbed her skin raw and still could smell him on it.

* * *

Bao-Dur had to keep telling himself not to stare.

The woman who called herself 'Del' looked completely at home in the shadowed corner of the filthy Nar Shaddaa cantina, one hand wrapped around a stiff drink and the other lightly stroking the butt of her rifle, a cigarra dangling from her lips and bouncing distractingly as she spoke. She was hooded, a scarf tied crosswise over her missing eye and casting the other in shadow. He could never have imagined General Deleón fitting seamlessly into such a sleazy tableau. Part of him wanted to believe that he'd been mistaken, that this scarred and angry husk of a woman simply could not be the General he'd once followed without question.

Then she would give him a certain look or make a certain gesture, one that could have been lifted straight from his memories of her a decade ago. Watching her made him feel a little dizzy, a little strange. Mostly, it made him sad.

Malachor had made shadows of them all.

Atton sat on the far side of her, his eyes sharp and watchful as they marked the other customers drowning their cares in bad booze, and sharper still when they lingered on the General.

He noticed Bao-Dur's attention and tossed him an easy smile. "So, what's the plan? Knock on doors until we stumble across the one that belongs to your Jedi pal?"

"Zez-Kai Ell is a secondary concern for the time being." The General settled back in her chair and blew twin streams of smoke from her nostrils. "Kreia might be capable of sensing him, if she wanted to, but she refuses to take one step off the ship. And even if he was right in front of me, I'm not exactly in peak condition. I'd at least like to see out of both eyes before taking him on."

Atton snorted. "Sure. A Jedi hurling you through a window with his mind just wouldn't be as much fun with your depth perception out of whack."

The General glowered at him, the haphazard blindfold and wreath of smoke around her face upping the intimidation factor by several degrees.

"So I guess we're working on getting that price off your head, instead," Atton went on, unfazed. "What did you do to piss off the Exchange so badly, anyway? They were riding your tail hard even before you splattered that Varren's head across the wall at Citadel."

"I've been wondering the same thing," Bao-Dur said. "That was a nice little bit of tech they hid in your eye. Must have cost a fortune."

The General set down her drink and rubbed at the condensation on the glass, not looking at either of them. "I don't know the reason for the bounty or the trace. But if you're intent on throwing your lots in with me, you should know that I do have some history with the Exchange. I never put down roots with any one faction, but I did trade my services as a...specialist now and again for appointments with surgeons who wouldn't ask any questions."

"What was your specialty? Wait, let me guess: interior decorating?"

Bao-Dur ignored Atton completely, his eyes locked on the General. "You were a bounty hunter."

"Killer for hire," she corrected flatly. "I did decide to stop accepting contracts after..." Her grip tightened, her fingers squeaking across the glass. "After the way the last one turned out. But I can't imagine someone going to all this trouble just because of that."

General Deleón thugging for the Exchange, trading blood for money. He was so stuck on that unthinkable image that he nearly missed what Atton said next.

"-been knocking off the whole Order, even after Revan took a hike to who knows where." He shrugged. "So say the rumors, anyway. Any chance this guy has his sights on you because you used to swing a lightsaber around?"

She smiled. It was worse than the glare, somehow. "You think it's a _Jedi_ he's expecting? I'd almost like to turn myself in, just to see the disappointment on his face."

Atton rubbed at the scatter of stubble on his chin. "You know, that idea's not half bad."

"It's _all_ bad," Bao-Dur agreed.

"Hear me out. What better way to find out who placed the bounty than by collecting it? You play prisoner, I insist I get the reward in person, and the three of us blast Mr. Bounty to cinders the second he shows. Pure pazaak."

For reasons Bao-Dur couldn't fathom, the General appeared to be giving the idea serious thought. "But how do you intend to leak the news that you've captured me? Or are we back to knocking on doors?"

Atton leaned in, lowering his voice. "You're not the only one with a past, Del. Mine just happens to involve certain useful contacts in this very sector."

"That's convenient," Bao Dur said. "Maybe the years have left me cynical, but what's to keep you from cashing in the bounty for real?"

"Me?" Atton smiled and stroked the General's arm, just above where the side of her breast curved against it. "I like to think our lovely leader is a better judge of character than that."

The General went rigid, the cigarra falling from her lips to the table. She stood up, her chair scraping loudly enough to draw the bleary eyes of several boozehounds.

"Go with him while he sets things up, Bao-Dur," she said. "Keep everything on the up and up."

That finally succeeded in piercing Atton's good humor, but all he said was "It'll take time. Days, at least."

"I'll find something to keep me occupied." The General pivoted on her heel and disappeared into the neon-splashed night, leaving the two of them flanking her empty chair.

* * *

Del made the most of the next few days, taking Kreia's words to heart. She spent hours in the stillness of the Ebon hawk dormitory, meditating beside the old woman and trying to remember how it had felt to touch another mind with her own. Once or twice she heard the ghost of Kreia's voice whispering in her mind, but her own awareness remained firmly imprisoned within the confines of her skull.

Whenever possible, she wandered the trash-strewn alleyways of the overstuffed refugee sector in search of more physical means of practice. The Smuggler's Moon did not disappoint, offering unlimited opportunities to skirmish with lowlifes from every corner of the galaxy.

On one such evening constitutional, Del wandered down a promisingly gloomy alley and was rewarding by the unmistakable sound of hissed threats and closed fists connecting with flesh. She went toward it with the first hints of a smile already on her lips, her vibrosword in its scabbard bumping against her thigh. On jaunts such as this she restricted herself to the sword alone and left her enhancers dormant, testing the limits of her body unaided.

Her smile widened at the sight of that evening's sparring partners: two humans, both with pistols, dwarfed by their Gammorean companion and his overgrown axe. They had penned an unfortunate Ithorian against the wall, and the darker-haired human was threatening him with his blaster in a casual way that suggested many prior performances. The Ithorian had his knobby fingers spread in front of his face for protection, for what that was worth. Not much, going by the ruddy knot closing one of his eyes and the dark blood dripping from one of his mouths.

Del flicked open the strap at the top of the scabbard and turned so that the sword lay in shadow. Then she cleared her throat. All four of them looked in her direction. The one with his pistol unholstered stepped away from the Ithorian and thrust his chin at his fair-haired compatriot, who took his place at once and shoved his arm across the flexed throat of their quarry. The Ithorian garbled something that required no translation.

The dark-haired man ambled a few steps toward her, the Gammorean lumbering close behind.

"Should have kept on walking while you still could," he drawled, aiming the muzzle of his pistol in the general area of her face as though he simply couldn't bothered to be more precise.

"Does it really take all three of you to shake down a single unarmed refugee?"

The man's aim improved at once. "Bad move, lady. You have no idea who you just insulted."

Del's eyes widened. "Don't tell me you work for the Exchange."

He must have mistaken her delight for dismay. He lowered the pistol and grinned, counting on his organization's reputation to do the intimidating for him.

"Got it in one. And you just doubled our take for the night." He held out his open hand as the Gammorean snorted laughter behind him. "Hand over everything you've got, and we might just play nice and let you see daylight with all your limbs still attached."

"No need to hold back," she said as she drew her blade smoothly, parting his outstretched fingers from his palm on the downward arc before he registered that she was moving. He stared at the blood pouring from his truncated hand in dumb surprise, then let loose a howl of pain that echoed the length of the alley.

Del grabbed his weapon hand before he could bring it up and pulled him against her chest, catching the axe meant to cleave her ribcage in two in the valley between the man's shoulders. The Gammorean tore the blade free and the man slumped to the floor in a spreading puddle of blood. He wasn't screaming any longer.

The other human swore, shoving the Ithorian aside as he squeezed off a shot in Del's direction. She hurled herself out of its path, ducking and rolling as she did to avoid the Gammorean's second swing. She straightened an armslength in front of the human, as he discovered when her vibrosword was firmly sheathed in his gut. She tugged it free in time to block the Gammorean's axe, though the power behind it sent her reeling back a few steps.

Del found her balance and darted in for the final kill, but the porcine creature was surprisingly spry for all his bulk and knocked her blade neatly aside. They traded a number of blows, Del's arms aching with the strain. She was sorely tempted to switch on her strength enhancers, but in the end she resisted the urge. Her skill won out, and the Gammorean ended his days pinned on her sword in a filthy alley.

She left the bodies where they fell, their purpose served. She was pleased to have bested the three of them but disappointed that her movements were guided by instinct and training alone, with not a hint of the Force behind them. After ten years of dull silence, she supposed, she could hardly expect to regain her sensitivity in a handful of days, no matter the hunger Kreia inspired within her.

Del blinked in surprise when the Ithorian stepped into her path. She had forgotten he was there at all. His whole body was shaking, the loose skin at the bend of his neck wobbling with fear, but he seemed intent on blocking her progress.

"What do you want?" She snarled the words, but sheathed her sword. Once it was out of sight the Ithorian appeared to relax, at least a little, and reached for her hand. He said something, a deep dual rumble that she could not decipher. Revan had always had a talent for language, picking them up by the dozen without apparent effort, but Del had more often gotten by on body language and guesswork.

The credit chip he pressed into her palm, at least, was easy to understand. She tossed it back to him without even glancing at the amount.

"Keep it," she said, sidestepping him and ignoring his droning protests. Call it payment or reward; either way it smacked of paid killing, and Del was through with that. Her vows meant so little any more, but this one she fully intended to keep. The girl in the flophouse had been the last.

Her thoughts turned deeply inward as she picked her way back to the ship, ruminating on the strange paths she had taken in the days since that last visit to Nar Shaddaa. So many echoes from the past were finding her: Bao-Dur, Atris, the trial records, and not the least the orchid pendant. The last gave her a lingering chill, remembering who held it now, and she was distracted enough that only when the sound of voices made her lift her head did she realize she was thoroughly lost.

Del decided to ask whoever was talking for directions. The words were Twi-lek, a language she had some passing familiarity with. She listened as she approached, meaning to gauge the tenor of their conversation before she interrupted, but the words she heard made her freeze in her tracks.

"He was prowling the slums again yesterday. The Jedi-killer."

"I had heard the rumors. I thought we were rid of him."

"I saw him myself, and hid as he passed. There was no mistaking it was Jaq."

"Then I pity the one whose trail he hunts."

Del decided she could find her own way after all. Jaq...she searched her memories as she walked, but the name meant nothing to her. Was he the one who placed the bounty? Or perhaps one who meant to collect it?

But she was not a Jedi. She had no idea who this person was or whom was he was hunting. It could be a coincidence, she told herself.

But why would it be, when nothing else these past few days had been?


	11. The Crimson Huntress

_Wow, there are still people hanging about, and people kind enough to leave reviews, to boot! I missed this place. :)_

* * *

It took all of four days for Atton to talk to the right people and pull the right strings to find out how to cash in the bounty on Del. It bothered him when he thought about how easily he'd slipped back into a skin he'd thought long-shed, picking up old habits with the guilt-edged relief of a drunk falling off the wagon, so he didn't think about it much. Leave philosophizing about right and wrong and dark and light to the freaks in robes. Lowly creatures like him would have to keep living by the rules of instinct and necessity.

He'd been sure that his Zabrak babysitter would spoil things, would spout off something stupid where someone could hear or get his horns in a twist about the seedy places they had to wade through on the way. But Bao-Dur kept his mouth shut and did what he'd been told like a good little soldier, monitoring Atton's every move without once trying to interfere despite the frown tattooed on his face. That was hard enough to stand, that silent and watchful disapproval. Atton could imagine the Zabrak recording everything he saw in that ink-scrawled head of his, taking notes to share with his precious General as soon as Atton was out of earshot.

Let him, he thought. Let both of them shake their heads and cluck their tongues over what a bad seed he was, what scummy company he kept. Let the old witch join in too, if she wanted. Make a party out of it. He hadn't asked to go along on Del's crazy revenge tour. He didn't need approval from any of them.

The Jedi reject hadn't let Atton touch her since their little sweaty interlude in the cargo hold, not without cringing away like he had some nasty disease, and he fully expected that once his bit part in this five-credit drama on Nar Shaddaa was through she'd tell him to take his bow and get off the stage. The old lady would let him go if Del demanded it, she'd _have_ to. And he'd walk into the sunset with a smile on his face and a song in his heart, and get back to whatever the hell he'd been doing before she'd dropped into his life like a bomb.

At the end of that fourth day, he paged the Ebon Hawk and told Del it was done. Her eyebrows practically disappeared under the edge of her hood in surprise.

"I'm impressed," she told him. "Really. I can't say I understand why you're helping me, but..." She looked away, fixing her diminished gaze on something he couldn't see. The next words came slowly, just above a whisper, like her mom was standing just off-screen and forcing her to say them. "I... appreciate it."

Atton wasn't prepared for the rush of satisfaction those words of praise, meager and hesitant as they were, sent through him. He waved them away, chuckling, his mask snapping into place as reliably as ever. "Hey, don't thank me yet. When the bounty's called off and your Jedi buddy's been spaced, you can bake me a batch of muffins or something."

"Muffins? I've never baked a thing in my life." Her lips twitched upward in a genuine smile. The blur from the video transmission softened the worst of her scars, and for that instant he could see the beauty she had been.

He wanted to see that smile again.

He wanted to hurt her until it disappeared forever.

Atton's head swam. He put his hands on the wall behind him, steadying himself, glad she still had her eyes downcast.

"Maybe you can think up some other way to show your gratitude," he said, and his voice, at least, betrayed nothing.

Her hand came into view, toyed with her lower lip a moment, and dropped out of sight again. "We'll...talk. Later." She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes again, and although the curious shyness retreated Atton thought he could still hear traces of it in her voice, a distant echo. "For now, tell me what you've learned."

* * *

The speed with which Atton had been able to arrange the collection of an Exchange bounty set off alarm bells, but Del told herself that dirty hands should not point fingers. Atton had two more surprises for her, besides: that Goto himself was the one funding her capture, and that he seemed to be under the impression that she was the very last of the Jedi.

The scarred sith lord who'd nearly killed her had made the same mistake. She wished that whoever had leaked her records to the galaxy at large had been thoughtful enough to include the tidbit about the Council blinding her to the Force.

Goto's involvement was a problem. She had never worked with the crime lord directly, or even indirectly as far as she was aware, and knew little enough about him except that he was mysterious and powerful and not to be crossed. Rumors marked him as paranoid, never meeting even his most trusted agents in the flesh. Taking him out was likely impossible, but the bounty ruse might still be useful. Either she would convince the man that she was not his intended prey, or she would deal enough damage to his underlings and equipment to make him think twice about hunting her further.

The arranged time arrived, and Del and her "captors" made their way to a deserted docking platform that looked like thousands of others. A transponder was clipped to her belt as Goto had instructed, transmitting her location to the pickup ship, and of course to a receiver on Bao-Dur's own wrist as well. He and Atton were both well-armed. Goto's lackeys would have no way of knowing that the rifle strapped to the Zabrak's back was for Del's benefit and not his own. Her hands were bound by an old and deteriorated pair of cuffs, easily freed.

They waited, alert and saying nothing. Nal Hutta hung bloated in in the sky above, scraped by the shadow fingers of a million towering buildings. Ships and speeders flitted through the dark like insects as a weak breeze stirred the air.

"Something's not right," Atton murmured. He held up a hand to silence their questions, listening intently to the night.

The soft chirp of a remote detonator afforded Del just enough time to throw her arms across her face before the world exploded in blinding light. She reeled, dropping to one knee as a second round of flash mines went off like a thunderclap almost underneath her. She fell to all fours, clinging to conscious thought by thread.

A flash of green. A fist cracking against her temple.

The thread snapped.

* * *

Solitary details floated across the void. The steady throb of pain in Del's head. A sensation of movement. The press of something cool and unyielding against one cheek. A woman's voice speaking, then a man's reply over a comlink. The latter tugged at her, oddly familiar, but she could not puzzle it out over the ringing in her skull.

She opened her eye a sliver. She'd been dumped in the cramped back seat of an airspeeder, her face flattened against the window. She could see nothing of the woman piloting the speeder save one green sleeve and a splay of red hair above the headrest.

There was no way of guessing what might have befallen Del's companions, but a hard lump digging into her hip suggested her captor had not had time to search her yet. Slowly, slowly, Del unclipped the transponder from her belt and slid it beneath one sleeve into the hidden wristguard that normally held her poisoned needles.

She might have risked more, but just then the woman banked the speeder hard into a turn. Del tumbled across the seat, her head in an uproar and her stomach roiling, then vomited into the footwell.

"Guess I'm not getting the deposit back," the redhaired woman drawled. Del caught sight of her face in the front mirrors, clear-eyed and unlined.

"Does your mother know you're out running errands for crime lords at this hour?" It sounded a good deal more biting in her head, when it wasn't punctuated by a bout of retching.

"I'll have to send her a message," the woman replied. "Right after I let the nursing home know you'll be skipping Gizkaloaf Night. Only sixty three days until the big four-oh, right?" She chuckled.

Del consulted her mental calendar and scowled. "Right. Now tell me my favorite animal and my shoe size and I'll be really impressed."

"I know a lot about you, Katya Deleón." The amusement abandoned her voice, leaving it flat and cold as the window glass had been. "What you were up to the last time you came creeping around Nar Shaddaa, for example. You're lucky I _don__'__t_ work for Goto. I'm tempted to hand you over to him gift-wrapped as it is."

Del let the woman's contempt roll across her for now, seizing on the pertinent facts. "Who sent you after me, then?"

"Someone who wants your sorry carcass safe and breathing for reasons I don't understand." The woman banked again without warning, sending Del sprawling. "We're going to switch to foot traffic for now. Those bounty hunters might have gotten a visual on the speeder." Her eyes flicked to Del in the mirror, her lip curled in disgust. "And I could use the fresh air."

The red-haired woman landed the speeder, her piloting involving more lurching and bumping than was strictly necessary, and Del vowed then to pay her back with interest when the opportunity presented itself. Still, a thin tendril of relief took root somewhere beneath the nausea. The woman feared that Bao-Dur and Atton had seen her and might follow. She had not killed them.

The woman popped the top of the speeder and hopped neatly out of the pilot's seat. She grabbed a handful of the back of Del's jacket and hauled her out onto the pavement, making her feel absurdly like a puppy dangling by the scruff of its neck. She tolerated it, but barely, aware that turnabout would only require a quick shucking of her cuffs, a flick of her strength enhancers.

For now, though, Del was more interested in the identity of the girl's employer than in reprisal. She let herself be herded through an unfamiliar maze of alleyways with impatient prods from the tip of a blaster, not much caring where she was going as long as the transponder up her sleeve was transmitting her location to Bao-Dur...and to Goto, as well. Whether Del's allies or enemies tracked her down first, she had a hunch that their arrival might provoke the mysterious new player to reveal himself.

As the throbbing in Del's head subsided, she came to realize that she was being lead on an erratic route, more than once crossing a path they had already taken. An old trick, and one Del knew well from the times she'd thrown a predator off her own trail by employing it.

They were being followed already.

The red-head shepherded her up a steep permacrete ramp, which lead to a covered bridge connecting two dark and looming buildings. They halted at the center of the bridge, where a break in the pillars offered a clean view of both the streets below and the skyways above.

The woman peered over the handrail, scanning the darkened streets, then ducked back behind a pillar with a whispered curse.

"Trouble?" Del asked, not bothering to keep her voice low.

"Shut up and don't move," the woman hissed. Then, more gently: "It's for your own good. I've seen what these droids are capable of, and it's not pretty."

Droids?

Del rose to the balls of her feet to get a look over the woman's shoulder, coldness washing down her back even before she laid eyes on the first angular, gunmetal-gray head. She remembered well how fast the droids had moved on Telos, how just three of things had left her half-blind and Bao-Dur on the threshold of death. There had to be ten of the droids moving in neat formation below, their yellow photoreceptors flashing in the dark as they chattered with one another. Directly beneath the place that Del and her captor crouched on the bridge, the droids split into two groups and set off in opposite directions.

"I think we've lost them," the woman breathed, but Del knew that wasn't right. The droids were following the signal from the transponder she carried, just as they'd followed the signal from her cybernetic eye before it. They had separated into two groups so that they could climb both ramps at once, trapping her on the bridge in between.

There was no time for elegance. Del gave her wrists a sharp twist, snapping them free of the cuffs, and let the transponder drop from her sleeve into her hand. The redhead started to whirl with her blaster raised, but hesitated when she could have squeezed off a shot. Del landed a heavy punch in the center of her solar plexus before she had a second chance, fist driving deep into muscles that were unflexed and unprepared just below the ties of the woman's flimsy excuse for a blouse. The breath gusted out of her, her blaster clattering to the permacrete. Del clipped the transponder to the woman's waistband while she was still reeling, snatched up a fistful of her jacket, and used it to hurl her over the handrail.

It wasn't a long drop. The woman would have been just fine if she could have controlled how she landed. She made a muddled, floppy sort of attempt to get her legs under her before she hit the ground, but her knees buckled like reeds.

Del smiled when the telltale crunch of ripping cartilage reached her ears, but couldn't waste time feeling pleased with herself. The droids had already mounted the ramps, and their photoreceptors would pick her out effortlessly from the shadows. Snatching up the woman's dropped blaster and tucking it into her belt, Del hopped over the railing, catching the lower rail as she fell. Instead of dropping to the street below, where she would be easy pickings, she swung forward and wrapped her legs around one of the support beams, suspending her body horizontally beneath the bridge.

"Unnecessary observation: the target organic has evaded our pincer maneuver. Goto will not be pleased if our delivery of the Jedi is delayed yet again."

The modulated voice came from right above her. She held her breath, keeping her body as still as the metal beam her knees were locked behind. She wished she had thought to turn on her strength enhancers, and the small sliver of her mind not completely focused on the psychopathic droids above her head noted that Kreia had spoken true. Unbolstered by artificial reserves of strength, Del had to fight to hold up her own body weight without her biceps and thighs shaking.

"Statement: sensors show that she remains nearby." Metal scraped against metal as one of the droids leaned over the railings. "Delighted observation: the target has damaged one or more of her limbs in an unwise attempt to evade us. And she appears to be unarmed. It is almost as though she _wants_ to be caught... or is pitiably outmatched by our sophisticated programming."

"Cautionary reminder: we should approach the Jedi carefully. Past encounters suggest a propensity for barbarity and property damage exceeding what the her mediocre intelligence and advancing age might suggest. Two droids will remain to act as sentinels while the rest approach."

Del directed very dark thoughts toward the droids as she listened to their metal feet clank softly down the length of the bridge. Between them and the smart-mouthed redhead, she was well on her way to developing a complex about entering her fifth decade.

Speaking of the youthful bounty huntress, Del guessed from how quiet she had been that breaking her leg had also caused her to faint from shock. A good thing, too, since she could have escaped while the droids were gabbing together like schoolgirls, probably even if she were limping or crawling. Del chanced twisting her head far enough to catch a glimpse over her shoulder.

What she saw made her catch a curse in her teeth.

Atton and Bao-Dur had _also_ succeeded in tracking the transponder signal. Bao-Dur pointed to the fallen girl, and the two of them began to jog toward her, Atton with his blaster drawn. Del could not risk calling out or waving to them, could only bite the inside of her cheek as the pack of homicidal droids emerged from the sidestreets behind them.

Atton noticed them first, elbowing Bao-Dur to attention. Del notice with commingled distaste and admiration that the Zabrak stepped in front of the wounded girl as he raised his fists, standing between her and the droids.

"Where is she?" he asked, his voice calm but rising clearly above the night breeze.

"Puzzled query: where is _who_? If you are referring to the Jedi right behind you, I suggest you speak to your primary care practitioner about performing diagnostic testing for ocular degeneration at the earliest opportunity."

"I'm not the one who needs my sensors checked," Bao-Dur said. "This woman isn't the General."

"He's right." Atton nudged the redhead with his boot, earning a pained groan. "This bounty-sniping little schutta is no Jedi. What happened to the woman she had with her?"

"Impatient explanation: it does not matter. We were instructed to collect a human female, tagged with a transponder, along with the human and Zabrak males who had captured her. That is precisely what we have found. Other organics are of no consequence to this transaction."

_Just __let __them __have __her_, Del urged them silently, but she needed no hints from the Force to suspect that tonight's plan was not yet finished self-destructing, despite the flaming wreckage all around.

"You have the wrong woman," Bao-Dur said again. "The deal is off."

"Regretful rebuttal: we have no time to engage in an extended exchange of words-or of blaster bolts. Goto values punctuality above brutality. Hostilities must be terminated in a brief and, sadly, non-lethal manner."

Del heard a click as the droids on the bridge raised their weapons, out of sight of her companions. _Non__-__lethal __manner_, the droid had said, but she knew well enough from experience that being maimed, blinded and probably worse was not off of the table.

She had the woman's blaster, and the element of surprise. She might at least be able to cause a big enough distraction for the others to get away.

Her knees loosened their hold on the strut, but before she could start to swing herself down, Kreia's voice rang clearly in her thoughts.

**_Do __not __cast __your __life __away __on __foolish __displays __of __solidarity__, __Exile__._**

Del nearly dropped from the underside of the bridge in shock. She'd heard whispers before, stirrings like dried leaves, but this... _The __Force_, she thought, wonder swelling in her chest. _I__'__m __feeling __the __Force __again__. _

**_You __cannot __hope __to __rescue __your __companions __if __you __are __chained __beside __them._**

Del tamped back her ill-timed excitement. The droid above her fired and a canister exploded at Atton's feet, spewing white plumes of gas that clouded the street. There was a sputtering exchange of fire, a flash of the Zabrak's cybernetic arm in the dim. Del heeded Kreia's advice and stayed where she was, though guilt coiled and twisted like a serpent in her gut.

When the smoke cleared, Atton and Bao-Dur were in heaps beside the crippled huntress. Three droids darted forward to snap glowing cuffs onto the wrists of their captives, then heaved their unresisting bodies over their square durasteel shoulders. They set off at a smooth lope, graceful and predatory, hardly making a sound.

Only when the quiet of the night held fast for a count of sixty did Del drop to the street below. She landed hard on tired limbs, but fared a great deal better than the red-head. She straightened slowly, the muscles in her arms and legs shrieking in protest at the simple act of standing.

What now? Charging off after them with her single blaster was suicide. She needed a plan. She needed help. But who could she call upon, when the nearest she had to friends were the very ones who needed rescuing?

"Mira?"

The voice came from somewhere near the toe of her boot. Del startled, jumping back a step. Something metal glinted on the pavement-the bounty huntress's commlink.

"Mira?" It spoke again, the same voice she had heard when she came to on the speeder. The girl's mysterious employer. A man Del knew. "Was there trouble? Please respond."

Del's skin tightened, prickling across her arms and her scalp. Yes, she knew that voice well. She had heard it many times in her youth, and again just days ago in the recording of her trial the astromech droid had purloined from Atris. _Many __battles __remain __for __that __one__,_ he had said of her, and he had been more right than he could have known.

She stooped and picked up the commlink.

"Zez-Kai Ell," she said. "We need to talk."


End file.
